I am still looking for what is coming next.  I’ve submitted my resume and materials for a Web job in the UMC world,  but now a month has gone by,  so I am afraid I am not going to get as far as an interview from that either,  which just baffles me,  and worries me.  Unless they are being really slow about getting to the interviews,  I’ve been passed over again,  and I have to think something is wrong with what they might have checked re: my references or talked to someone who is discouraging hiring me.  My credentials,  and particularly my combo of tech and theology and church,  should be at a minimum a strong case for at least a look (ie an interview). The fact that the farthest I  have gotten is a phone interview is raising the concerns I have for whether or not someone in the pipe is communicating negative things,  or maybe I’m just considered to be too old to be hired as a developer  (to be 55 in two months).With my theological background AND my technical knowledge of how databases and various Web tools work,  I am in a unique position to help church organizations strategize and implement Web and Social Media.  I’ve been running my own blog for 9 years,  participating in Web communities since its beginnings in 1992 or 1993,  and prior to that on dial up online communities like Ecunet.

I have also studied the use of Web in church communications for 20 years since I got my Masters degree in Religious Communications from United Theological Seminary in Dayton in 1991 (ten years after my M.Div at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1981 (when it was still a theologically diverse school,  and the denomination was starting to experience serious conservative backlash rumblings which were promising to "cleanse" the denomination of its liberals and "return" it "to the Bible").

From my early "online writing" days on Ecunet,  to today’s "Social Media" explosion,  I have been studying, researching,  and experimenting in how the church might leverage the "Wide Open Web" (a phrase Doc Searls got from his son,  and I like it). Lately,  I’ve been writing often about the church and the possibilities for a "Social Graph" for the church and theological communities.  This is where I will be attempting to make a case for the value of "theological databases";  data which is designed with our community in mind.  Like Facebook’s "Social Graph" that connects people via interests and similar or the same "Likes",  we have a taxonomy operating in the church that could be expressed as relational data that would be some great ingredients  for a "Church Social Graph" that takes into account the categories of theological interests and concerns of its people.  Religious Publishers,  including the one that I worked for,  have really missed the boat on this one.  Facebook recently added an app to leverage data from "Library Thing",  which is a great model for connecting people via theological reading.People who are reading certain books,  the similar books in the same category,  and who gravitate to certain authors,  are ripe ground for finding theological kinship ties that can lead to some good online conversations,  and even to offline collaborations that have an impact in "Face to face" life.