An article about the beginnings of WIRED magazine in Business 2.0  (July issue) have me thinking about how the Church could use a mag that calls it to explore the possibilities like WIRED did for all of us.

WIRED thoughts

As I read the article in this month’s Business 2.0 about the beginnings of WIRED,  I was thinking about how the Church needs such a magazine.  Sure,  the tech-boom in which WIRED was born was proven to be over-hyped;  a “Bubble”,  but few have emerged from that bust with the idea that there isn’t something to this Web -thing, still. It’s just that we have to take it slower and realize that these things aren’t going to all work at once and bring in utopia overnight.  In order to take it slower and think a little harder about how all this is supposed to work,  and how people will want to work with it,  we have to “be there” and “be users” and “be explorers”.  This is something the Church has failed to do.  They have accepted,  for the most part,  the whole “shovelware” model of the Web,  and sought to regurgitate the print world onto the Web.   The missing ingredient ,  I keep insisting,  is the VOICE;  the community;  the sense of collaboration and exploration which ,  for me,  is the cornerstone of a Church that has heard God’s call to open up the channels of communivation between us. 

For me,  the Pentecost event was driven by the reality presented int the opening verse “When the day of Pentecost came,  they were all together in one place”.  The idea here is NOT flesh,  but “gathering”.  The Spirit moved “among them” as a fire.  It wasn’t a “Fire in the belly”,  but a fire that enveloped the THEM;  the community.  Of course,  the intent of the author of Acts was not inclusive of the idea of disembodied space.  The Communication technologies were limited to immediate space (writing, speech, and non-verbal bodily communication).  But now the sense of “one place” has many forms.  The face-to-face,  (ftf) is still the major focus and locus,  but the Web and the Internet have worked some give and take;  some “flux” or fluidity,   into the ingredients of “place”.   Wea re only begining to discover “group mind” growth possibilities.  I have to believe this has enormous implications for the Church in the electronic communication age.  Will there be avenues for the Church people to participate in the maturing of the new selves that are being grown when one sets foot in the waters of time-shifted,  place-shifted,  thought-capturing electronic communication networks? 

Back to WIRED.  The Church needs a WIRED voice that calls it to step beyond the stance that “warns” us off the Internet ,  lest it cause us to “abandon the Church”.  What is often being said there,  is that it is tempting us to leave the hallowed halls of tradition,  which is scary to the leadership.  I have found that rather than tempting us to exit from the Church,  it is a source of amazing resources that can enable us to “offer the alternative environment in which the ideas and dreams and passions of people are valued,  nurtured,  and WANTED.  Often,  people can only get that sense that their ideas and concerns are valid ones via lurking amongst people who are discussing and exploring these things online.  Unless this “point of safe entry” was first encountered and the visitor’s interest peaked by the textual exchanges,  that visitor may never feel that the Church has something to offer them,  or that the Church would value the same things the visitor values.  But having seen evidence of the very real thoughts of others,  they will “seek out” embodied version of these exchanges by following links to locations being recommended by the content providers.  In the case of Old St. George,  there is indeed a physical place which reflects the openness,  the hospitality,  and the environment of learning and exploration that is communicated on the site.  It works the other way as well.  The sense of “place” and the sense of “safety” and “oasis”;  of “Third Place”,  can be a subject of study and research and development aimed at “duplicating” or “approximating” the sense of all that in an online setting.  The aura and the “feel ” of a place can be fluidly communicated from one to the other.