This is the second post in a series on doing ministry in a post-Christian, digital society. In the first post, I explored what I perceive to be a cultural shift from post-modernism to what I defined as digitalism. Here I want to lay the foundation to explore some of the ecclesiological implications of the Internet.
You Have No Idea
Seems you can’t go anywhere today without running into some conversation, blog post, or story about how such and such church is integrating the Internet into their ministry. The rise of social media and the popularity of such platforms like Facebook and Twitter, have heightened the sense within the Church at large that we must figure out what our online strategy is. Some people doing great pioneering work in this realm are John Saddington and his site Church Crunch, Kem Meyers, Tony Steward, the good folks over at Church Marketing Sucks, Drew Goodmanson, Church Communications Pro, Tim Schraeder, and many more.
I say it’s pioneering work because, though it doesn’t seem like it, the Internet as a daily and vital component of our lives is really only about a decade old. And we really have NO IDEA what it’s doing to us, our society, our children, and our ministries. Yet, we’ve (society at large) embraced it wholeheartedly as not only a norm, but also as a great advancement in human society and interaction. Perhaps this is because, as I alluded to in my last post, it appeals to our ego in a way no other medium has.
I can think of no other major shift in human interaction and thought that has been so completely, quickly, and docilely embraced than the rise of the digital age.
I can think of no other major shift in human interaction and thought that has been so completely, quickly, and docilely embraced than the rise of the digital age.
I am Ego
As I sit in my office with my headphones on, having spent the last three hours staring at computer screen, I am completely isolated in my world and thoughts, yet I am also connected to more people than ever in my life through Twitter and Facebook – at the same time. But the important component is that I have the power to engage or not engage. I create the reality of my relationships and the context in which they are acceptable to me. And others do likewise.
Of course I don’t have this luxury when my fellow office mates tap me on the shoulder. In those moments I don’t have complete control – at least not without looking like a total jerk. The rules – the norms – of physical community dictate that I should interact with my community, even when I don’t feel like it. And it has been that way since the dawn of human society.
Not so anymore. As a digitalist, I can be a hermit and connected. Picking and choosing which interactions best suit my ego and my desires. It is pure, white-hot consumerism.
When Fools Rush In
My fear is that as the Church we are being swept up in this NEW cultural shift without engaging it correctly. Too often our online strategy is not a strategy at all but a blatant and often poor imitation of the way the world and businesses use the online medium – as a subjection of authority to the individual. Marketers often talk of this great shift from one-way interactions between businesses and corporations and their customers. A new day has dawned. Your customer is in charge, and you must engage them in conversation. The consumer has always dictated product in a sense, but only in so much as the producers made it available. Now it is the consumer that drives everything.
Our job as a church is to create disciples and equip the saints to do the work of the ministry. How do we do that effectively when we’ve never met our people face to face? Is it possible?
Consumerism is not a new problem for the church, especially in America. But I fear the rise of digitalism will make it much more so – and that we will gladly embrace it in the name of going where the people go, without ever actually going to them.
Here are hard and honest questions we should ask ourselves:
- Are we doing online ministry and online campuses because they further the Gospel or because people want them?
- Is our online strategy full of practical implications but lacking theological ones?
- Have we critically examined what implications for the shift to online community are for Gospel formed community?
My inclination is that you have answers to these questions, and I’m not the first to ask them. I’m interested in the answers you’ve come up with.
My next and last post in this series will deal with my thoughts on how we balance the Biblical conception of Christian community with the prevailing culture of the digitalists. Until then, I’d value your feedback on my thoughts here – and your ideas for a path forward.
Well put. I think I agree with everything you said…I would only add that all of these things have value to a local church in how they are connected to Christ and to actual relationships. Too many churches are just saying “we need to have a twitter account and re-do our website.” I really hope it goes deeper than that.
Thanks, Tyler. You’ve stolen my thunder a bit for the next post! I believe the path forward is an incarnational one. My mantra for our efforts here at Praxis is that our online community is only as strong as our physical community, and solely intended to connect people to Christ and the Church body.
Jake,
I couldn’t resist. Great thoughts here. I especially like the idea of a measured engagement with online social resources. We need to understand what they are, what function they serve, and what they are replacing as it relates to the way people interact with their world. I can only give a personal reflection, but I don’t know anyone who has used online resources to enable them to become a hermit or recluse completely walled off from the world of face to face contact. Instead it seems that people use social media for a certain type of interaction. Perhaps a type of interaction that is happening less in the traditional social contexts or a that didn’t used to happen but now we have developed an appetite for. I’m curious which you think it is. Have our in-person interactions changed such that needs and wants of a consistent social appetite that used to be filled no longer are, or is our social appetite changing based on the new ego binge based on-line mechanisms? In a more reflective sense, how did people live without the internet? Finally, do you think the shift in behavior reflects legitimate personal needs, or an egoistic luxury? The question of need vs. luxury seems to me to have significant implications on how we as Christians ought to use/guard against social media.
In speaking of being a hermit, I was admittedly using hyperbole. However, I don’t see it as unlikely that in the future there could be easily imagined realities where people forsake physical community for long periods of time to interact in purely digital environments. A fascinating novel on this topic is Michel Houellebecq’s, The Possibility of an Island.
To your point about interactions. Yes, I believe our in person interactions have changed, especially in the younger generations. Just observe college students interacting and see how long they can focus on the conversation without picking up a phone to text, email, check facebook or twitter, or some other form of digital interface. We are slowly losing our ability to focus on the moment and on each other.
I think this is indicative of an increasing appetite for an ego driven communication model. If the current conversation is not capturing my insatiable need for ego stimulation, I will go to a place that does. Usually that is our phone in public places. Unconsciously (or perhaps consciously) we are saying you are boring me.
I’m not sure I can adequately answer how people lived before the internet since my adult life has been much affected by it. However, I can say that I see an interpersonal generosity and a much more genuine ability to show interest in other people in the older generations than I do in people my own age or younger. Maybe I’m romanticizing, but it seems that the term salt of the earth is much more readily applied to my grandparents than to anyone I know in my social circle.
In any case, your questions are good ones, but I’m afraid I don’t have comprehensive answers. As this post is concerned with, I believe this aspect of the Internet as an integral and accepted part of minute by minute existence is such a young phenomenon that we don’t have a clear picture on the long-term implications. So rather than just speculate on the implications, I’m saying we should question why of all cultural changes, we have accepted this one so wholesale and with such little resistance in such a short amount of time. My gut says it’s because it is ego driven and not forced from the outside as many other cultural changes may have been. Consumerism has been making head roads like this into our lives since the dawn of the advertising age – but the Internet and social media are taking it to new levels.