Good Stewards of Online Community

TheoBlogical Community
The Blog that took over New Media Communications A place to reflect and connect on the subject of Theological Community and Online Community

My Resume

NMC Home Page

Home

TheoBlogical

Church of the Saviour

Good Stewards of Online Community

There is no doubt that ANY pursuit requires moderation, and for the Christian, nothing should be allowed to detract us from spiritual disciplines that keep us from becoming overly fettered to spirit-numbing habits. But Dr. Schultze, we don't escape instrumental practices by avoiding cyberspace. I know you didn't say that, but in the end, you come out sounding extremely Luddite. Your tone seems to discourage the attention to online sociology, psychology, and spirituality I think is needed in order for the Church to effectively be what it is being called to be in the context of the online culture. It needs sufficient understanding in order to build the most effective types of interfaces to services it can provide online. Information services that aggregate relevant resources for theological communities. Forums for interaction that bring to the online world a moral and civil discourse, since we believe that we are to be "a light unto the world" --- let us show it in our online morality. Let's be the kind of "difference" to the online world than we are in the face to face world. (Or, maybe we already are, and that's the problem. We're not makng much a dent in either place. Even so, we can bring learnings from one world to the other, and seek to improve our impact on both).

I mentioned before how I feel this kind of "moral superiority" approach (the "traditonal" vs "the evil new technology") would seem to be discouraging of just the kind of "spiritual emphasis" that I think is needed from the Church in order to faithfully and effectively appropriate online technology. It is a supreme test of our call to be good stewards. In every attempt to be good stewards, there is the consciousness to stay awake and alert to the pitfalls and the subtle temptations, just as it is with ANY struggle to maintain good stewardship.

The resistance I picked up was that none of the "relational" aspects of Church could be practiced online; that to do so would constitute some osrt of desecration, or to hope for "communal" relationships online would be somehow deifying it and becoming "techno-utopians". I detect a deficiency here in the understanding of both the psychology and sociology of online interaction, and in the exploration of the range of possibilities for experimenting with the ways that online "places" can enhance, extend, and invite participation in "community"; and I do NOT believe we can draw distinctions between what MUST take place face to face and what CANNOT be done online. MY experience tells me that online interaction "has it over" face to face in many instances. That being said, I do NOT believe that one can DO EVERYTHING online, or "be Church" or "do Church" ONLY online. Schultze seems to imply that there are all these "cyberculture enthusiasts" who are saying that. There are not. There may be some on some way out fringe, but not the ones I read. He gives us a rather flat, one-dimensional, and thus inaccurate view of the ideas of these people.

Part of the whole problem here, and motivation for many of the "lonely rootless individuals" that seek solace online are lonely precisely because those bastions of "virtuosity and goodness" that Schultze constantly holdsup as the "solution" to the rootless, impersonal online space, have failed miserably. Somehow , the same values that Schultze locates in cyberculture are also present in Churches and other such traditional communities. And this happened long before there was a cyberspace.

Sure, there are legions of expression in cyberspace, and many many ways of expressing angst, rootlessness, and loneliness, and many ways of conducting searches for answers, for relationship, for a "place to be heard". And this is precisely why the Church needs to be there. And to bring with us our love and compassion, and express that as best we can. To people who feel comfortable expressing themselevs in writing, this is also good spiritual exercise. I doubt that Schultze disagrees with this, but I fear that the approach he takes in the book will be used by people in the Church as an excuse to reject the use of the Internet for all but "instrumental" purposes. I've had a pastor in a Church in which I have been a member tell me that "The Church Web site should be 'informational' "; they rejected the notion that valuable dialogue could happen online. They reject the notion of "online community" out of hand. There is a bit more evidence that Schultze rejects this as well. I think this leads us down the wrong path.

I think it is vital to our survival that we "learn to be the Church" online; that we "tell our story" online; that we "make a case" for our value as a face-to-face community by showing that we can also be a "disembodied", cyber-community for the purposes of inviting people to "see how we love one another" when we are face-to-face, as well as to show how we love one another in the online spaces we build. Yes, we do need hugs and eye contact and in-person prescence, but we also need every available avenue open in order for people to FIND US. I have found so many "face to face" friends via being online with people I have found via Searches and in groups I have found online. In a couple of cases, it has been the motivation for me to take a full day's drive to a meeting of Ecunet users whom I had never met face to face. Some of those people whom I have still never met, I continue to logon to go and "visit". I received support from them, and still do, when I lost my job in November.

To "Live Virtuously inthe Information Age" is NOT ONLY to "get offline", but to ask what it means to BE VIRTUOUS ONLINE. That question is not addressed in the book. If it was , it was so overshadowed by the cautionary tones. Absent of supplying such examples of online virtuoisity, the book ends up impying that there isn't such a thing as being virtuous online; that one has to be face to face to be virtuous. If this is not the message, the consistency and intensity of the attacks of just about every aspect of cyberculture without offering "postive examples" gives just this impression. It seems to me that this will be used as fodder for arguments against the Church being "too interested" or "investing too much" in figuring out how to "be the Church" in an online culture. In fact, that last phrase of mine will be portrayed as "cyber-utopian". I guess that to say that the Church should seek to "be the Church in the world" is utopian? That this somehow implies that the Church being the Church in the world implies that all is right with the world? This is ludicrous. No, we're called to be the Church in the world because it needs us. It needs us who are "sent"; God calls us to "sojourn" and to meet the world at the point of some need. A culture is rapidly spreading. The culture that Schultze does a good job of analyzing at the point of its flaws and its pitfalls, but falls way short in identifying where and how the Church can enter in, build "oases" within that desert, and practice Online Hospitality. Yes, hospitality. Online. It is certainly possible, and it is our duty. It is possible to build places online that communicate "you are welcome", and "what you believe and are concerned about is important".

comment []