Dispatches from the Connected Life
Ready or not, people of faith are hurdling into the techno future just like everyone lese. But the gospel values they are carrying with them complicate, test, and enrich the way forward. Reflections invited Yale Divinity School alumni to weigh in with their own stories and surmises about this new media moment. Here are some samples. The contributors share how they are navigating, resisting, embracing, or otherwise making their way through historic times …
The Word Became Facebook
By Travis Scholl ‘07 M.Div.
The mid-1990s: I still remember my last year of undergrad when my classmates started visiting the computer lab to use this new thing called email. And the next year, when getting on the internet meant enduring the long series of screeches and beeps that dialed up America Online.
But by the time I found my way to YDS, 1996 felt so long ago. Even though I had long before abandoned AOL, I found that my colleagues preparing for ministry were communicating more by social media than by the telegraph called email. Thus I joined, and it felt so exclusive. Like I was ahead of the curve.
Some have estimated that Facebook reached the height of its dominance in March 2010, when more people visited Facebook than Google. In its perceived ebb have come Twitter and now Google+. I spend more time now communicating once again by phone rather than computer. Except that I’m not talking. I’m checking my Twitter feed.
Awhile back, I heard someone on NPR wax eloquent about this media revolution. What was most revolutionary about it, he (or maybe it was she) said, was its astonishing velocity. She (or he) compared it to the 1970s, when the fastest technological advance in communications was moving from a dial phone to a push-button. Then the 1980s, when we went cordless. Twenty years felt like real progress. By contrast, it seems like a century ago when anyone used Netscape to browse the web. 2005 feels so long ago. This can pose any number of challenges for those who are in the business of “news” – or, more exact, for those of us in the business of communicating “good news.” How do we keep up with the breakneck speed of it all? Will the technology overtake the hu- man interactions it was supposed to support? Will Facebook be the same ghost town as MySpace by 2013? Yet the one question that is already answered is whether or not we should be there. The ubiquity of social media is simply too thorough to avoid. And too easy. Setting up a Facebook page or a Twitter account takes all of, oh I don’t know, three minutes.
The question I am still trying to think through goes deeper than that. And is more confounding. How can social media, in any real way, express a witness that approximates anything close to incarnational? How are social media fundamentally changing the ways we conceive of presence in our daily interactions, when all I might ever see of you is pixelated? How do I, as a minister of good news, maintain a ministry of presence in a digital culture that strikes me as, with each passing day, more and more gnostic?
It isn’t lost on me that the very Reformation of which I am an heir was mediated by a technological revolution even more profound than the one we are undergoing today. There simply would have been no Luther without Gutenberg.
And so, yes, you can find me on Facebook. Twitter too. Were Luther alive, I am quite certain he would be posting on his blog, one thesis at a time. But my hope is found in the fact that whether or not any of it is good news is best left to the One who can make any news good.
The Rev. Travis J. Scholl is managing editor of theological publications at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. He blogs at www. stltoday.com/civilreligion.
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Embraced by the Virtual Body of Christ
By Deanna A. Thompson ‘92 M.A.R.
I have to admit that in life before cancer, I had a dim view of the internet’s ability to bring people together. Living and working with others who are constantly connected to digital tools left me skeptical that any new relational depth was being plumbed through our wired lives.
Then I got sick. Really sick. In a matter of months, I went from being a healthy forty-one-year-old religion professor, wife, and mother of two to a near-invalid with a broken back, a stage IV cancer diagnosis, and a grim prognosis for the future.
To keep family and friends updated during the early days following the diagnosis, my brother created a Caring Bridge site for me, a website dedicated to connecting people who have serious illnesses with those who care about them. News of my diagnosis spread quickly. Just as quickly, loved ones signed up to receive my Caring Bridge postings. From my narration of what stage IV cancer had done to my body to the grief of having to resign from my very full and wonderful life, each of my posts was met with dozens of postings to the Caring Bridge site, as well as additional emails, cards, packages, visits, and calls from people from all corners of my life. I started to realize that through our connectedness via Caring Bridge, I was being surrounded by a cloud of witnesses greater than any I could have imagined before.
Thus it is through this cancer journey that I’ve been awakened to a new – indeed, almost mystical – understanding of the church universal, mediated through what I’ve come to call the virtual body of Christ: that is, the body of Christ incarnated in, with, and through the power of sites like Caring Bridge.
Now let me be clear: I’m not trying to sound sentimental or issue some feel-good platitude about how cancer has made me more appreciative of the value of community.
What I’m talking about is a new understanding of the church universal, a breathtakingly broad embodiment of Christ’s hands and feet ministering to me and my family during our walk through the valley of the shadow of cancer.
This experience of the virtual body of Christ has also gifted me with a fresh appreciation of the ecu- menical character of church catholicity. Prompted by my entries on the Caring Bridge site, many of my friends from the Roman Catholic tradition – the church that holds most tightly to this notion of universality – have embodied Christ to me in stun- ning ways. I’ve had Mass dedicated to me across the globe. I’ve been given a medallion blessed and sent on to me by a priest friend. These traditions of dedicating, blessing, and honoring – traditions that make rare appearances in our Protestant expressions of church – have made their mark on my soul.
But there’s still more to say about the universal nature of the church. I’ve become convinced that the church universal extends even further, beyond the bounds of Christian communities to include those of other faiths and even those of no particular faith.
Take the grace bestowed upon me by one of my agnostic Jewish colleagues. Shortly after she returned from a trip to Israel, she sent me an email about how my postings on Caring Bridge had become a source of inspiration to her. Spurred on by my story, she had even gone out on a limb and attempted to pray herself.
She then told me she had visited several churches in Israel, and in each one, she sat down and prayed, asking Jesus for a favor: that he might consider healing her friend with cancer.
While such embodiments of grace flowing from the virtual body of Christ continue to take my breath away, I also must confess that Caring Bridge has not been a wholly unproblematic tool. For instance, friends and acquaintances have told me how much they love my Caring Bridge site – but of course I wish to God I didn’t need one. When I could not find the words to express and post my despair over my new life, I heard from some well-meaning folks who said I needed to post because they needed to hear how I was doing. There are moments when Caring Bridge becomes for readers like any other social networking site. But for me, a vehicle for updating others on life with stage IV cancer will never be just about social networking.
Even with its potential pitfalls, my life – as it is lifted by the ongoing love, prayers, and support of so many – is living testimony that God’s saving grace continues to work through our humble human creations. Thanks be to God for the internet.
Deanna Thompson is professor of religion at Hamline University in St. Paul, MN. She is the author of Crossing the Divide: Luther, Feminism and the Cross (Fortress 2004) and of a theological commentary on Deuteronomy (Westminster John Knox, forthcoming 2012). She is a Lutheran theologian who writes and speaks widely on the intersections of Lutheran and feminist thought. See also www.caringbridge.org/visit/deannathompson
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Taking Up the Bible Anew
By Marek Zabriskie ‘89 M.Div
With a little help from the far-flung world of social media, our church invited members of our parish this year to join me in reading the entire Bible in 2011. And what an adventure it launched.
Many people make New Year’s resolutions in hopes of becoming a better person or obtaining self- improvement. The number one resolution is to lose weight. The second most common resolution is to exercise more. Within six days, most Americans have given up, because they have no one to hold them accountable.
We decided to capitalize on New Year’s resolutions by inviting people to make a spiritual resolution and read the entire Bible in a year. Our plan was to provide the support of our church and create mechanisms to help hold them accountable to their resolution.
Issuing email invitations, we had hoped to have perhaps fifteen church members participate and were astonished when, in six weeks’ time, we had 180 participants and 85 friends beyond the church who had joined our Bible Challenge. The number continues to grow.
I found that sending the email invitation was like fishing in a stocked pond. Many men responded, “I have always wanted to do this. Count me in.” I discovered that reading the entire Bible was a lifetime goal that many wanted to accomplish, but they needed someone to challenge them to do it and help them reach their goal.
We provided free Bibles, but a turning point came early when we suggested that they could download the Bible and read it on their iPad, iPhone, Kindle, or Nook, or listen to it on CDs. The overall effect has been remarkable. We now have husbands and wives passing the Bible back and forth across the bed stand at night. A married couple who are both physicians and commute forty minutes each way to work are listening to the Bible on CD as they drive. YDS Dean Harold Attridge, a personal friend, has joined us, reading the Bible each day on his iPhone. Lawyers and executives in our parish who commute by train into Philadelphia each day are reading the Bible on their iPads or Kindles.
We use Constant Contact email to communicate regularly with participants. Our email messages encourage them to continue their daily reading and offer ideas for comprehending the Bible and reading it devotionally.
The experience has been so well received that our church decided to create The Center for Biblical Studies (CBS) to promote The Bible Challenge across the United States and the world.
The communications offices of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion are now promoting the CBS and The Bible Challenge to more than 5,000 Episcopal churches and Anglicans in 168 countries around the world. They along with St. Thomas Church are using Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to promote The Bible Challenge nationally and globally.
Our CBS website (www.thecenterforbiblicalstudies.org) was inexpensive to create and can have enormous impact. We stumbled onto a simple, good idea and let the Holy Spirit guide us to use technology to spread its impact from one community to almost every country around the world. We believe The Bible Challenge can energize countless churches and transform millions of lives. We are thrilled with how tech- nology has allowed us to further this ministry.
If your parish or you would like to join The Bible Challenge or help us launch The Center for Biblical Stuides, please contact me at mzabriskie@stthomaswhitemarsh.org or 215-233-3970 ext. 120. We welcome your participation. You can also find us on Facebook or at www.stthomaswhitemarsh.org or www. TheCenterforBiblicalStudies.org
The Rev. Marek P. Zabriskie is rector of St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Fort Washington, PA.
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Becoming Smart about Smart Phones
By Diana Carroll ‘08 M.Div.
Two months ago, I took the plunge. I finally got a smartphone.
I resisted making this technological leap for a long time, despite pressure from friends, colleagues, and, of course, my phone company. My resistance partly had to do with setting good boundaries and maintaining a healthy work-life balance. After all, if I could get church email on my phone any time of day or night, would I really be able to resist checking it when I was supposed to be “off duty”?
A much deeper reason, however, was my fear of what kind of person a smartphone would make me. I had spent a good deal of time around other people who used smartphones, and it bothered me deeply the way they always seemed to be checking their phones while we were talking or sharing a meal. They would frequently interrupt our time together to read a text message that apparently could not wait. More often than not, they would then take the time to write a reply. Whole conversations were being carried on with someone who wasn’t in the room, while I simply looked on and waited for the person’s attention to turn back to me.
I did not want to be one of those people.
This is the great irony of our many new communications technologies: they enable us to reach many more people much more often, but they can have the effect of making us less present to the people physically within reach. What I fear most is that some of these technologies will erode our very capacity for being present at all. The ability to be fully present – to God, to others, and to ourselves – is absolutely essential to the spiritual life.
I know first-hand that electronic communication can be an amazing vehicle for building community across distances. I belong to the Young Clergy Women Project, which has members across the country and the globe. We keep in touch through a blog, e-zine, and email newsletter. Especially for those serving in rural or isolated areas, where they may be the only woman minister under forty for miles around, the support and wisdom provided by this web-based community is invaluable. Some members even go to great lengths to meet up with each other in person.
No matter how much we become connected by email, Facebook, texting, video calls, and whatever new digital breakthroughs emerge in the coming years (or next week), none of it can replace the physical presence of another human being. This is true in the life of the church as well as everywhere else. We may post sermons online, offer pastoral care via email, and provide webcasts of worship services, but sacraments still cannot take place virtually or at a distance. By their very nature, they require contact between one human being and another – the pouring of water, the laying on of hands, the sharing of bread and wine.
According to the gospels, Jesus very rarely healed anyone from a distance, though he clearly had that power. His earthly ministry, right up to the end, was almost exclusively carried out in person, face to face.
This is the same kind of ministry that followers of Christ are still called to offer to the world. The world needs it more than ever. The church’s ability to be truly present and to teach us presence will only become more valuable and relevant, not less.
Since becoming a smartphone user, I would like to be able to say I have wholly resisted the temptation to respond to messages while I am spending time with someone. That would, however, be untrue. Still, it helps immensely to approach this new technology with an awareness of the potential pitfalls involved. Slowly but steadily, I am learning to master my smartphone, email inboxes, and Facebook account, making them work for me instead of me working for them. It has become a kind of spiritual discipline – one that I will need to keep practicing, I have no doubt, for years to come.
The Rev. Diana Carroll is an Episcopal priest currently serving as Assistant to the Rector at the Church of the Holy Trinity, Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, PA.
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Narcissism and the Net
By Jerome Strong ‘04 M.Div.
We are allowing our lives collectively to spiral out of control by devaluing communication and solid face- to-face relationships that are the basis of civilized society and settling instead for the artificial contact we have with people online. I was nonplussed, when, during a local Usher’s Anniversary service, the guest preacher stopped what he was saying in the pulpit to tend to a buzzing smartphone he had attached to his hip. That bothered me even more than when, at another service, I saw people in the choir texting – or when preaching from the pulpit myself, I saw people in the congregation texting with a huge grin on their faces because whatever it was that was distracting them from the work of the people was quite entertain- ing. Whatever happened to “We would see Jesus?”
There are those on our highways who have transitioned into eternity while trying to convey a text message – taking with them several other unsuspecting motorists because of the horribly fatal automobile accidents their selfish negligence has caused. You may remember the reported images of the woman who, while walking in a mall, fell into a fountain while texting. I read recently that too much time on Facebook is the cause for extreme tardiness in the workplace. There is even a study now of people who have withdrawals – Facebook Syndrome – from not having access to social media.
These are all indicators that we have gone too far with the convenience of social networking and our trusty electronic devices. Yet I am almost sure that if the average user of social media were polled, the consensus would be satisfaction. I say satisfaction because social media offer people the opportunity to be as narcissistic as they have ever imagined. They are able to choose the best of their photos, which paint them in a light that others are bound to envy; the trip to Prague, the opera, the theatre, the new car, roses delivered at work by the best lover ever, and the winning ticket at the races. Social media have given us the means by which we can wear our best masks while eschewing the parts of our personality that need the most work. Yet the parts of us that push us towards such media narcissism and real-person isolation are the parts that need our attention. So much social media now drown out the noise the squeaky wheels make, the wheels we used to hear.
Jerome Strong lives in Oakland, CA, where he teaches religion and takes classes in art.
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Left Behind?
By Liz Frohrip ‘79 Mus.M., ‘80 M.A.R.
The old commercial declared “let your fingers do the walking” to tout the benefits of that era’s newest communication methods. Now it’s closer to “let your fingers do the talking” as we text, tweet, and post incessantly.
At least, some of us do. Though a lot of folks have smartphones or tablet computers, many others, for either technological or financial reasons, don’t. A good 15 percent of my congregation doesn’t even use email. When a church or other organization relies heavily on electronic communication, two classes emerge: those who know what’s going on and those who are left in the dark. Those in the second class unfortunately feel no one cared to fill them in.
Worse, each group is tempted to make judgments about the other. The electronics-avoiders tut-tut over the loss of “real” communication among those who depend on digitized speech, while the thoroughly up-to-date shake their heads at the ignorance and pig-headedness of the technophobes.
A healthy, diverse community needs to include both extremes as well as those of us who stand on the middle ground, fascinated but not terribly competent.
As the body of Christ at this transitional period in history, we must use multiple modes of communication: For those who only communicate via Facebook, we have to be there. For those who communicate by text, it’s an option we need to pursue. For those who read only snail mail, we have to write, use proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling. For those who still use that thing attached to the wall by a cord, it’s a viable instrument. All this takes time and patience, but it is necessary. Our ultimate goal is not just efficient communication; it’s communicating for the purpose of doing Christ’s work.
Last spring we planted a tomato and herb gar- den on the church’s property. An older member who doesn’t even email conceived the idea and tilled the ground. Two families who only communicate by iPhone and Facebook did the planting and constructed a Facebook page to journal the project and recruit interest. The harvest was a success.
Then last Friday, the same non-technical guy garnered the donation of 415 additional pounds of tomatoes from a local farm to augment our overall project: to make lots of tomato sauce for families in need. Sauce-making leadership passed to a woman who’s more comfortable with email than other modes. A suitable sauce recipe, safe-food-handling instructions, and extra equipment were secured by a busy person with an iPhone who reached out to a much larger community. A crew was gathered via the tomato project Facebook page, telephone, email, and even by something called face-to-face conversation.
There was, however, one unifying factor: everybody wanted to get their hands dirty – in a real-world, tactile, pre-digital way – and do something to feed the hungry. The result: hard work, fun, community building, and a lot of people fed.
The swirling array of new media mesmerizes those of us who see its potential and find it fun. However, we need to keep daily perspective: it can have a polarizing effect if not used judiciously. It’s still only one tool among many.
The Rev. Liz Frohrip is Associate in Ministry at Salem Lutheran Church in Bridgeport, CT.
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The Best and the Worst
By Michael Milton ‘03 M.A.R.
We can use new media to develop the best or the worst parts of ourselves. Let’s look at someone who uses new media to elevate the worst parts of himself, then one who does the opposite.
Everyone sees Jeff as a nice guy, and he is one. But they might be surprised to know what he does on his computer. He starts off each day by pulling together breakfast, sitting down, turning on TV, and checking the sports scores on his iPad. He has a Twitter account that doesn’t reveal his identity, and if the sports scores irritate him he’ll make some snide comments on Twitter about referees, coaches, or players. In web jargon, he’s a “troll.”
Before he leaves for work, he finds time to spend a few minutes on free pornography sites, which he usually checks four or five times a day. While riding the bus, he scans the news on his phone. Usually he’ll post to Facebook a partisan sneer du jour, but most of his friends on Facebook won’t see it because they’ve tired of it and set their filters to ignore him. If he’s feeling sad sometimes he’ll put a prayer into his status update, which usually gets a few “likes.”
At work, if one of his hands is below his desk, he’s probably text messaging without looking at his phone. He has an unlimited texting plan and spends most of the day chatting with his girlfriend and other people. A couple times a week he has visitation with his children, and they’ll sit around a table at a cafe or bookstore for ninety minutes. They all spend as much time tweeting on their smartphones and playing video games as they do talking.
Back home, he’ll look at the Facebook profiles of his ex-girlfriends, read trashy blogs into the wee hours, and eventually go to sleep.
He doesn’t focus. When he reads news in the morning, he is half-present, casual, unreflective, and prejudiced about events. When he works, he focuses in his job enough to come off as competent, but is surfing the net and texting. He loves his family, but they get a mere precious fraction of his attention. He’s connected in the sense that he’s always communicating, but he has a profound and ill-concealed feeling of alienation. He doesn’t read books.
Denise uses new media to elevate the best parts of herself. In the morning she picks up her Kindle and finishes the reading she started the previous night. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of the sci-fi romance genre. She maintains a blog where she means to critique authors in the field but ends up heaping adoration on them. Her pseudonym is well-known in the sci-fi romance community as a cultivator of talent.
At breakfast she asks her husband about his day. Her iPad, iPhone, Kindle, and computers are on, but not at hand. She grabs her phone as she walks out the door, listens to the news on public radio as she walks to the bus stop, and on the bus tweets from an account in her real name anything interesting she heard on her walk.
At work, the news is turned off. As a community organizer, she is in a constant struggle to focus and be present in her interactions with many people. She writes over a hundred emails a day to colleagues and friends.
To get the word out for her organization, she has to be fluent in digital media platforms. She has a good sense of when to communicate the organization’s message on social media, or video, or on a blog, or as editorial content on third-party websites, or using some combination. Her contact list is full of passionate Generation Y kids who recruit their friends online to support her work.
Every day she has responsibilities that require sustained focus; she blocks off parts of her day and goes off the grid to fulfill these duties. Usually she wins the focus struggle. She keeps her mission as an organizer in front of her mind at all times, and she thinks about compassion.
By calibrating herself in this way, she is able to communicate and shift attention rapidly while maintain- ing a thread of mindfulness. People recognize this and admire her for it.
At night, the iPhone doesn’t follow her to bed, but the Kindle does. She disciplines herself to put down the sci-fi romance novel occasionally and read one of the long-form journalism pieces that established authors are starting to self-publish and sell for a buck or two over Kindle. She uses this content and new media generally to elevate the best parts of herself.
I’m somewhere in between these two composite sketches, hopefully closer to Denise than Jeff. The temptation to use new media to gratify the worst parts of oneself is always present, but the amplifying power of new media presents an opportunity to build the best sorts of community and steward the best sorts of creativity.
Michael Milton, who lives in Washington, D.C., is a strategist and client manager for nonprofits at Blue State Digital.
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Be Selective
By Peter Baldwin Panagore ‘86 M.Div.
I work in a trans-media ministry that reaches a million people a week. First Radio Parish Church of America was founded in 1926 on AM radio. I produce using media tools – script-writing (stories), video, audio, social network, the web, print, and email. FRPCA communicates though media – TV, AM, FM, email, web, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, magazine, book, and smartphone, in video, audio, and print.
I have a few favorite media tools. My iPad is my teleprompter. I use it for my ministry, including on- location shoots, funerals, worship services, or for reading the Bible, preaching, and storytelling. It’s easy. The telepromptor app is cheap. It’s effective. The first time I used it was as an officiating minister at a swanky wedding in Bar Harbor, Maine. When I pulled it out at the rehearsal, people didn’t know how to respond. What?! No black book? No black folder? No Bible? But it went so well – the teleprompter is so smooth and the Bible app so easy – that I have used it ever since, and my iPad syncs my calendars.
My iPad connects me with Facebook. I am a public person with a private life. I use my personal FB wall mostly for professional reasons. I rarely post anything personal and never post anything private. We have a Facebook group for our ministry, too: Daily Devotions – FRPCA. We encourage my friends and fans to share my video postings, thus slowly growing our user base.
Through Constant Contact we send our daily emails. Mailing systems like Constant Contact prevent our daily emails from being misrecognized as spam. With judicious links and careful email layout, we direct readers to our website and to Facebook. Through a function in Constant Contact we tweet everyday. Linking our daily emails to our website and Facebook, and the other way around, integrates our communication tools, allowing each to build upon the other, creating a stronger virtual community.
Back at YDS, I carried my Swiss Army knife. My “everything” knife had a corkscrew (for sacramental wine only), a toothpick, tweezers, scissors, a saw blade, a magnifying glass, two screwdrivers, a can opener, and two knife blades. Today, I carry another everything tool – my iPhone, where I take story notes, use GPS to scout on-location spots, document events with photos, map parishioners’ homes, email (naturally), connect with LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, and I use it as a flashlight so I don’t stub my bare toes on summer nights.
Our website aims to be clean, clear, and simple to use. It reflects a fractal design based on measurements of eye movements over websites. Google Analytics measures usage. I ask myself, how do I get people to go to DailyDevotions.org or to our Face- book wall? By telling them, over and over and over.
But here’s the thing to remember about using media, all media, any media: to make things appear easy, simple, and clear takes a significant amount of time, and with every media venue added one increases the workload in a disproportionate way. As you consider adding media in your ministry, be selective.
The Rev. Peter Baldwin Panagore is a creative tech head, producer, author of Two Minutes for God (Simon & Schuster, 2007) a storyteller, and the minister at First Radio Parish Church of America in Portland, ME.
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Joining the Network
By Robert Loesch ‘66 B.D.
In 1966 when I began in my first parish, pastoral ministry was done completely face to face or on the phone. Forty-five years later, my own ministry now includes the use of social media as one of many ways to minister, putting me in touch daily with church members I wouldn’t otherwise get to know nearly as well.
I still visit many individuals in their home, nursing home, assisted living facility, or hospital – usually church members who cannot be reached by computer or cell phone. Personal, individual face-to-face ministry remains crucial in our depersonalized, technological society.
For nearly all the rest, I use Facebook for direct communication. Many of our younger members share messages and information posted daily on their wall.
I receive reminders of the birthdays of my Facebook friends. I can send greetings to them privately or so their other friends can share in these messages. Parents report on the trials of taking care of children, the daily and special events in their family lives. During the past summer, more than twenty families of our parish posted images and reports about their vacation trips.
Recently, as I was preparing to perform two different marriage ceremonies, several attendees posted their reflections about the ceremonies for Meredith and Daniel, Ashley and Adam. This strengthened my pastoral connection, and the church’s connection, to the extended families of those involved in significant life events.
Social networking is helpful during serious illness. Parishioners on Facebook who have been ill keep their friends and family informed, sparing the intrusion of visitors during difficult times. I often add my own prayers and brief greetings. This sort of communication can occur as a loved one is dying, and in the aftermath of the memorial service when family and friends share their grief.
Facebook allows me entry into conversations and experiences that would only happen otherwise if I were in the home or in daily physical contact. Frequently, I have received private inquiries about questions of faith or ethical issues to which I respond privately on Facebook, or by more secure methods of communication.
Several local soldiers who have returned from Iraq or Afghanistan have kept in touch during their deployment with Facebook friends. I have followed Matthew’s deployment, his search for work, and his reintegration into routine daily life.
These forms of outreach do not comprehensively define ministry today, but they have become essential tools of connection that were not possible before the internet.
The Rev. Robert Loesch is pastor of Zion’s United Church of Christ, Sand Lake, NY.