Disciples today: communication

Several weeks ago, I started a series of blog posts based on a recent set of reflections I delivered about who Disciples are today, and who we may become in the future.  I am finally to the fifth of five areas I’m exploring about who Disciples are today – communication.

You can check out previous blog posts for reflections on congregational transformation, the growing diversity among Disciples, the economic recession, and a trend toward cooperation.  Next week, I’ll begin exploring what the future might look like for Disciples.

First, it’s essential to understand that it’s not just that we have new communication tools that we must learn how to employ for the sake of the Gospel today.  Something even more radical is happening.

Christians have always had to adapt to new tools of communication in order to get across the Gospel message in that day.  In ancient societies, oral history — the telling of stories — was the primary means of communication.  Jesus told parables, easy to remember stories with lessons.  In the Middle Ages when the vast majority of people were illiterate, visual tools became the means for teaching the Gospel.  The artisans of the great medieval cathedrals carved and painted the stories of the Bible to teach the populace about Jesus.  In our era, when video began to rival the written word for prominence, Christians started filming the message.

But some tools have done more than provide a new medium for the message.  Some tools over time have radically altered our ways of thinking and our patterns of behavior — our very understanding of and experience with our world and our faith.

When the printing press was invented around 1440 and the Bible was mass produced for the first time, this access to the Word of God changed the way people thought.  It rewired their brains, and I dare say, it even changed the message of the Gospel as it had been taught.  People who once understood their God only in the way conveyed to them by the priests who had exclusive access to sacred texts, when these people could read and understand such texts on their own terms, they began to ask questions about their world, and about themselves.  And about the church.  And the Protestant Reformation happened so thereafter, and changed the very way we think about God and the church and ourselves as people of God today. 

Something along the order of the invention of the printing press is happening today.  New technologies — the internet in particular — is not just a new tool for communication.  It is changing the way we actually think, the way our brains work.  And of course, it affects younger people more than older folks like us. 

Social networking, texting, email, Facebook, Twitter, websites, blogs, news sites.  One effect these technologies are having is a flattening of how we see the world, and how we find meaning in it.   The modern sensibilities of older generations would have us searching for universal truths, for overarching paradigms in which to organize and discern the meaning of our everyday lives.  But younger generations find the truth, the paradigms, the meaning, in a web of relationships that can stretch around the world.  They are adept at networking, at looking for others who are doing what they want to do, and pooling their insights and resources to do it better with them.  And they are not as protectionist as we have been (see previous post). 

Some examples of where this kind of new communication is occurring in the church, and how it is reshaping the church:

2009 General Assembly.  The tweeting, blog, up-to-date news reports, streaming video — all these technologies not only helped folks participate more dramatically regardless of whether they were present or not, but it also changed the General Assembly experience.  A “democratic back channel,” I called it in my September/October 2009 editorial in DisciplesWorld.

RSS feeds.  This service called, Really Simple Syndication, is now available for most every kind of online information out there, and it allows you to customize what kind of information you want coming to you computer or mobile device.  So, now you can choose to have Week of Compassion, DNS, DisciplesWorld news, and your regional news posts coming directly to you rather than having to go to all these different sites to find it.  Think customized church information.

DisciplesWorld’s the Intersection, and the news.  This is our new social networking site set up as a place where faith and life intersect through dialogue, conversation, and sharing.  News sharing is also the name of the game today.  Even the big players like the Washington Post and the smaller players like your local news stations are sharing their news gathering services.  You’ll see more and more of this, and it can’t help but bring us closer and make us more informed.

Developing your own resources.  We partner with International Disciples Women’s Ministries to publish a new magazine for women, Just Women.  Previously, the women used a resource that was more like a curriculum with step by step plans for leading sessions.  A magazine is different than a curriculum.  Rather than explicitly telling women how to lead their groups, a magazine provides topical articles and resources that can be accessed and customized for local groups in their own contexts.  This has not been a seamless shift in the practice of women’s ministries.  It relies on the expertise in the women’s groups as much as the expertise behind the publication. Very post-modern.  A new way of doing things.

Congregational transformation. As described in a previous post, this movement is really a networking movement rather than a program that has been launched by centralized experts.  This is the wave of the future. 

So, what do you think?  Where do you see, or do you see, places where these new modes of communication are not just being employed as new tools, but are actually changing the way the church thinks, behaves, functions?  And what is your assessment of it all?