Capturing and Encouraging Online Stories

The Church has what I consider to be a crucial communication problem to work with.  It HAS to get on the stick and become conversant, comfortable, and at home in the online world.  Email won't cut it.  It just doesn't open the conversation wide enough.  Email works fine for people who wish to converse one on one,  but it just doesn't open things up for community of the Church kind to the extent that Web technologies can.  Email does very little to give a sense of place.  Web "places" can highlight and organize "buzz". 

I certainly don't advocate abandoning the use of mailing lists or email.  It's just not going the distance with what is possible and advisable for an organization or body of people whose very existence depends largely on its ability to "engage" with the language of the people,  at least a very large, educated, economically siginificant portion of the people.  And part of the importance of "reaching" these educated, economically significant people is that they are the ones with the strongest networks,  because they have the resources to help the Church discover the power of the network,  and to test the powers of the art of storytelling and how crucial it is that we in the Church learn to use the Web to do this.  Our biggest clue to the importance of this is in the history of the impact of Scriptures.  Here is an essentially one way storytelling medium,  but nevertheless has created conversations around it in very diverse theological circles.  The study and the exploration of it around the world has created educational institutions and entire disciplines of study,  and societies of interpreters and anthropologists and expositors have come together around the task of helping these words come alive for new generations. 

In the past couple of days I have read of new experiments by businesses in blogging.  These businesses (one of them being publications about business,  as in The Red Herring and their AlwaysOn network of blogs) are recognizing the power of story and of sharing knowledge.  In the Church,  we primarily pay attention to the stories of staff people.  They're up front giving their sermon and we're in the audience listening and learning.  Denominations have bishops making statements (which I applaud),  but they also need to take these occasions to encourage dialogue amongst themsleves,  and I see very little of that online. 

The websites of many  Churches today are the religious equivalent of "marketing hype".  Theological and popular expressions,  welcome to all,  we're one big happy family,  here's our pastor(s) and here's our building and here's how you get there.  Something about our Websites need to communicate the theological equivalent of "voice". This "voice" is ,  as the Cluetrain Manifesto authors tell us,  is "human".   We are attracted to Churches where we feel we have a shot at finding people on similar journeys.  We tend to do that by using the Birds of a Feather Flock Together strategy,  reasoning that by attempting to assimilate into a group of people much like ourselves,  that we will absorb the right type of "way to be Church".  The problem with this,  is that this "right way to be Church" often does not include hooking us up with people who are being called to related areas of ministry.  It instead involves a kind of "consumerism" where we "get involved" in as many programs as possible.  It becomes a matter of blending in rather than a search for call,  which involves discernment,  and the cultivating of an atmosphere and strategy aimed toward discernment.  For me, the primordial starting place for discernment is in connecting to each other's stories. 

I thoroughly encourage the seeking after face to face based strategies for sharing stories.  The Church I have been a member of for 5 years often holds summer "Sunday School Hour" sessions called "We Are The Church",  where each week,  two members would share their "story",  and these sessions are great for the listeners as well as for the ones doing the sharing.  But there was so little time ,  if any,  given to response.  Often,  the story of the first ate into the time allotted to the second,  and certainly into any chance for feedback to the first,  for fear of robbing the second.  Then,  it was often time to "rush" into the 10:30 service,  which was already behind schedule,  so nobody stood around to talk.  The Choir members were gettiong up and leaving during the second presentation.  As one who shared,  I found this frustrating while understandable.  I also sense that this "lack of time for feedback" adds to the frustration I feel about the woefully inadequate feedback I have received ,  in general,  for almost two years,  around the calling to which I have sought to respond by attempting to garner support for a vision of what a Church Web for our Church could be.   The fact that I have such a struggle and opposition to large portions of this vision flies in the face of my idea of Church as a community whose purpose is to enable each other to discover and apply our gifts.

© Copyright 2003 Dale Lature. Last update: 9/23/2003; 3:39:42 PM.