I love to watch The Gillmor Gang webcast,  and I love to watch some of the Twit.tv shows that Leo Laporte hosts,  because they approach and explore technology with such a passion and they also obviously enjoy it.  I often come away energized,  not because I find some nerdy fascination with the details of technology,  but I really appreciate how these netcasts really dive in to the implications of new technologies,  and how such things can represent significant turning points in the history of human communication.

And dig a bit deeper beneath that,  and I feel that this kind of discussion is a close kin to the passion I have for exploring  implications of technology for the church.  The Leo Laportes, Jeff Jarvis’s, Steve Gillmors, and Robert Scobles (and there are many more,  like Howard Rheingold and such)  all have a passion and a morality to their exploration,  which enables them to be tireless resources for thousands who follow technology and trust their ideas about it.  With me,  I look at those conversations such as on the Gillmor Gang and deeply desire to bring together a similar passion for exploring how technology impacts the church,  and the online technologies and tools in particular.  These technology folks study it and explore it for what it can do for us as individuals,  as communities,  and as a political people,  even for how it can enhance community and further collaboration between us. 

I think we in the church should be exploring and studying and conversing about it because of all the above,  and that firstly and lastly,  for the sake of the Kingdom of God.  That we can learn to leverage those tools and wield them with the highest of stewardship.  Swords into plowshares (as tech has built horrible weapons,  it also can enable humanizing communication,  and allow us to find in deeper and more “always on” or even “often on” communications,  a faster ramp to finding out more about each other which can bring us into deeper communion not only with each other,  but with the God who dwells amongst us.