Eric’s Tasty Morsels of Thought – The Matthews House Project, Blogging, and Online Debate

Quote of a quote from Eric’s post on Kaz’s post on Jeremy Huggins’ post on The Matthew’s House Project

While one could argue that the blog is merely an extension of the body, like a second mouth or an external memory card for one’s life, the fact remains that my blog, which is contingent on my having a power source and an internet connection, is no more a part of my body than is my computer itself, at this stage in technological development. [3]

Really good stuff, and is just the kind of discussion I crave, and have with my blog/self/extension/blogosphere all the time.

Eric says:

There are certain topics with certain people from certain backgrounds that I will just not mesh with, and it is not safe for those avenues to be explored anymore. It’s not like I can change anybody’s heart (if that’s even what needs to happen), and I’m glad that such difficult things like that aren’t even my job anyway.

Yeah, me too…but like you, I keep doing it, based on some rationalistic hope or something. Something about this won’t let me give up on that entirely; say like when it comes to how a diverse community can discuss/dialogue on certain things. There USED to be a VERY wide diversity in the Southern Baptist Church, especially at the college and seminary level (I was heavily involved in the Baptist Student Union at Murray State University in Murray KY, before I headed to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary after that), and at this university there was a VERY WIDE and diverse fellowship, and I had MANY ffriends of all stripes (many pretty darn close; but we never came close to the kinds of clashes we see amongst “conservatives and liberals” today. I feel like I have to keep that quesiton on my radar: how do we survive as a Church and avoid the more destructive/damaging/offensive verbal battles? Do we give up on the fellowship when it comes to that? Church of the Saviour seems to attract only those who have that level of commitment to in-depth discipleship and accountability (otherwise you’re not a member). They also assume an Outward JOurney mission for everyone, and that everyone is being called to something , according to their gifts. So they don’t end up with the kind of community where some of these diametrically opposed theologies clash. Their emphasis seems to be on being an “obedient Church”, and the struggles in seeking to sense and hear and understand God’s call for a particular time seems occupying enough. But they also place a great deal of emphasis on the Inward Journey, which for them, is neccesary for the Outward Journey, and vice versa.

Matthew’s House Project article linked to by Kaz (whom I found via Eric)

these bloggers would surf the Web and take note of interesting articles, stories, and photos, then place links to those items, usually accompanied with brief commentary, on their blogs. What they did, in effect, was to pre-surf, or filter, the Web for their blog visitors. In the aforementioned book, Blood goes on to say that “what drew them together, when they found each other, [. . .] was their love of the World Wide Web, and the desire to share the things they found.”

THis kind of thing is exactly what I hooked onto when I discovered blogging. I had begun to think of these things pre-Web (like with things like Compuserve, where there was the first real sense of PLACE that I remember (AOL followed shortly after, along with the relatively short lived Prodigy). I started a discusion on Ecunet (now a much less lively place than I remember it when I joined in 1992, but they’re dreaming new thngs now, and we may yet see more from them…I’m still in touch with some of those people. I ‘ve been trying to get them to become related to blogs and RSS , since it fits the kind of community they are)

The idea of a PLACE to collect, gather, and aggregate, enhanced with my own thoughts (or detracted from, whichever the case may be), and open to comments, and trackbacks (speakig of which , I love the idea, but it has been becoming less used now becuase of the scummy ping spam that is hitting not only comments, but trackbacks. I hope all the developers keep at the grindstone in helping keep comments and trackbacks clean and unstained by spam). Trackbacks are a wonderful communication device; it is “distributed conversation”, where you can “Comment” locally and have it show up on the remote blog’s list of comments/trackbacks (assuming they have it on, or have an external service that collects them).

The Church of the Saviour “Servant Leadership School”, descended from their original “School of Christian Living” (wherein intern members agreed to complete a specified “Seminary-type” set of classes on some “basic” Christianity (but ‘basic’, of course, became like “Programming Basic”; an underlying set of interlocking pieces that supports a whole— their School of Christian Living evenings started with a meal in common, and then their classes, which often extended long into the night, as they became attached and driven by the growing sense of call and form a bond and a commitment to particpate in the Jesus story in some form with some structure to address some point of need in their community, city, or world.

So blogs, as I see it, as an “aggregating” and “analyzing” and reflective function it serves on various types of content, can be a collaborative tool for some pretty exhaustive surveys of a wide range of theological issues; BIblical issues; justice issues (and there, so much has already been done in mobilizzing folks via Meetups and such with the Dean campaign; I keep siging up for Sojourners and The Right Christians meetups, but nothing has actually happened yet. But blogs can, and this is a big one for me::

Serve as EXTENSION to “offline” (face to face , or FTF) commmunity. Blogs are an unobtrusive way to “show something of yourself” and not worry about taking up someone’s time who does not know you, and whom you might well never enter into conversation on a certain topic of mutual interest, simply because you’re both unaware of each other’s interest or depth of feeling for the topic or issue. Blogs provide a way to put up information about such things that are findable by searches, where the FTF world depends upon serendipity or disciplined group dynamics dedicated to helping people be on a journey together (and with the rapid DECREASE of such accountablity among modern Church members, this is becoming more and more rare). I believe that Blogs can actually REVIVE some determination to seek out FTF community , just becuase we have become “clued in” that we are not an anamoly; that we are not part of some small cultish frame of mind; that we are NO LONGER STRANGERS.