The news I got this morning that my latest prostate biopsy turned up negative was not all that much of a shock,  since I had already had three previous  negatives over the past 9 years.  But with my PSA level showing up 4 times higher than what has been my norm over the past 4 years,  I was wondering if I had been carrying a dormant but undetected cancer,  and it had finally come alive.  But the biopsy this time took double the samples (24 instead of the previous 12),  and still came back negative.

We’ll continue to watch, of course.  And I ‘ve started on some prostate meds that do some shrinkage and some needed nutrients.  But all this had me thinking this week about what the road ahead holds for me as I “continue on”,  and what that means for my vocation.  

I’m wondering about current institutional structures and the incompatibility I’ve encountered between those structures and my own vision for what I can bring to the table.  In short,  I’ve found that my “light” was kept under a bushel by individuals and bureaucracies;  a certain maddening , eventually “soul-sucking” sickness that has me poised to throw in the towel  on any hope of being able to convince any of them (individuals OR bureaucracies) of what should be getting thought about and planned for in terms of New Media and the church.  It is puzzling tome how churches and church folks aren’t thinking about what the “Social Graph” is for the church (in whatever church setting we’re talking about;  in individual churches,  in denominational or larger church agencies,  etc.)   This would seem to be an important topic for church communications folks.  It’s the kind of stuff that Mark Zuckerberg saw which jettisoned him into the execution of that task that “would never be finished”  (the line given the character written for him in the movie “The Social Network”)

It has to do with devoting many more resources (people and money) to the idea of “theological databases” (or a “theology of databases”) where theological language and categories are brought alive by usage,  similar to the way in which Amazon recommends books by comparing the titles you’ve purchased to the OTHER purchases of others who have made that same title.  Only instead of applying it to purchases only,  we make such comparisons by gathering similar data based on other conversations (or “tags” in said conversations),  church(es) attended, blogs read,  twitter followees,  etc. ) in which the user has participated.

More on this after an errand I have to go out and run.