TheyCallMePastorBryan

Much time has passed since I promised this post.  It seems that I decided to give myself a writing sabbatical for a while, things have just been busy.  This post probably won’t be nearly as substantive as I’d hoped, but I will do my best to put some thoughts out there.

Much emphasis is put on community as an integral part of ministry lately.  Much of the reason behing social media in relationship to ministry is along these same lines.  There are some definite benefits to using social media in this way.  Here’s a few that came to mind as I was thinking about this:

• provides an environment where some anonymity allows people to be comfortable asking questions they might not in person.
• social media provides a level of continuity in connection that isn’t necessarily possible otherwise due to people’s busy schedules.
• it allows for a democracy of ideas, a place where everyone can be heard and their ideas considered(this can also be perceived as a weak point, depending on how you approach it)
• allows for development of more complex thoughts than is possible by verbal communication – there is more time available to craft thoughtful responses to people’s questions.

These are all good things, and I think valid reasons for using social media to speak of spirituality, christianity, etc.  This is not to say that there aren’t things to be worried about.  I personally am constantly worried about twitterfication. That is, using something like twitter that establishes a small character order serves to only really allow bumper sticker slogan type responses.  I for one find bumper stickers excessibly frustrating because nothing meaningful is ever abbreviated to a small sentence or two.  There is always much more thought needed to develop than what we might otherwise have available.

I have one other huge worry about too much emphasis on social media, and that is this: I am not sure that there is enough cost to the community created by social media. We intrinsically value more the things which cost us something, yet the allure of social media is that there is a low cost for connection – it flexes around our schedules, if we don’t like some one we can “unfriend” them, we don’t have to deal with the hassles of real life interaction.

One of my professors in seminary said of community “Community is always where the person you least want to be around is.” Another pastor that I think hits some good points speaks of God’s Kingdom as a party full of people we wouldn’t be caught dead with on a Saturday night.  Social media usually forms our comunity around those who we like or share similar affinities with.  While it is helpful to have these sorts of relationships, we have to be careful that we don’t miss out on the enriching that happens by being formed in relationship with others who we wouldn’t necessarily spend time with.

Although I have these doubts, I believe social media is a useful tool.  It is useful in its roll as a tool to augment community founded in real life interactions even more though. I fear that church communities which would be too heavily reliant on it though will have some troublesome implications which we must deal with. (Truth be told I think that these challenges are existent for everyone in the facebook generation and not just church communities).

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