Connecting When We Are Not There

When we are "not there" in a physical , face to face sense,  we are often drawn to the things which we last explored,  or to anticipation of something TO BE EXPLORED in an upcoming meeting.   I remember so vividly the sense of anticpation and "longing for more"  that I experienced when a small group of people from the Church Youth Group (we were all college students then , in 1976,  who had been fellow High School Youth Group members) were reading Call to Commitment and "Our Many Selves".

As Church people begin to become more at home with interacting online,  there are numerous ways in which we can "tell our stories" and be widely heard and enjoy the level of attention that can be afforded to online contributions of reflections on self, faith, issues. 

I began thinking about this on this first day of 2003 as I was into the second chapter of my re-reading of Call to Commitment,  entitled Approach to the integrity of Church Membership.  This emphasis is a major motivator for me to encourage the Church and its communicators to take more seriously the centrality and importance of enabling the community to experience some of the energies of online interaction.  Especially when the online environment often serves to make more likely the discovery of interests, passions,  and concerns of fellow members who sit next to us in Church every Sunday (or as often as we attend),  whom we rarely get opportunity to know,  to hear.

To take the matter of Church Membership seriously, and to affirm the proper place of our mission as being "at the center of our lives and work" rather than as an afterthought or some periodic movement of devotion,  we must be about doing the work of the Church with the assumption that the members are placing the work of the Church and their role in it at the center of their activity,  and at the center of their planning.  This brings us to the matter of our call to appropriate the most effective means of sharing our plans and reflections (as businesses do with such things as "Knowledge Management Systems") and doing our utmost to keep in touch with the world and bring our theological perspective to bear upon it.

© Copyright 2003 Dale Lature. Last update: 9/23/2003; 3:38:27 PM.