MDiv, MA in Religious Communications (from a UMC seminary), 18 years Web dev experience, 20 years research in online community and the church…..hmmmm….seems like some church organizations could use someone like me.  But  alas,  we have yet to figure out in the church how and why it helps to have theological and church background when considering social  data, and theological community issues. 

14 years ago today I started my first denominational Web dev job.  And regardless of the overt claims made about “understanding and utilizing the Web for the church”,  it seems that the church has yet to understand the necessary interplay between theological and church “sociology” and the technical matters of figuring  out how people utilize the Web to connect with and  learn from each other. 

What’s almost as bad is how few,  even amongst people who talk about the church and Social Media and the Web a lot,  how very few online conversations are happening about the significance of the “Social Graph” that Facebook has  brought to bear on the ways and reasons people connect.  I see widespread usage of hype about how the church must be conversant in this space,  and it must,  but we are not bringing our theological lenses into the equation.  We are often adopting a model that is not aware of what our life as a people of God entails.  There is virtually NOTHING out there where the church is asking  about what our “Social Graph” data structure could be.  There is virtually nothing that is said or  explored  about what a “hyper-connected” social  reality will do to the way we relate  to each other  in our  society,  and more  importantly,  how we in the  church are to talk about what is happening to conversation in this social context.  There are good things, for sure.  But  there are “shortcuts” being employed using the anonymity and undemanding nature of online connections. 

Don’t let me gloss over  the good things.  I am in this line of work because  I have seen,  and continue  to see things that convince  me that we can extend community in ways that were never anticipated.  We can find our own voice,  and get back “validation” of our sense of call when our geographical situation would otherwise have prevented us  from finding  others who feel and think the way we do about these  things.  When I joined Ecunet back in the early 90’s ,  I began to think  aloud about some of the things I saw emerging  in the online  spaces as represented by the “locations” in Compuserve,  and AOL,  and soon after,  the World Wide Web.  I experienced my calling there.  I knew from that point that I had  something to say,  and I would be delving into the technical world of Web development to discover how things  worked,  and WHAT THINGS worked,  and use that experience  to help lead the church into a useful grasp of what was evolving online. 

But I’ve experienced a lot of  disappointment in these 20 years.  I faced a lot of skepticism in a publishing environment re:  online community.  I moved on to another church agency,  and in the  midst of a more positive public perception of the idea  of online  community,  Web development continued to focus on “online versions” of old media.  The idea of “Social Graph” as a means of connecting a large diverse denominational audience  and user was not recognized as the pivotal shift as it was for Facebook.  The discoveries and implementations as propagated by Facebook were not seen as strategic insights for the church.  They simply “linked” to Facebook,  and created “Facebook pages”,  but again without the commitment to be , themselves,  a part of that community.  It’s as if they had  to continue  to be the “source” that pushed content  out  to the masses. 

The failure to see those “data” issues and begin to construct  the mega-relational tables needed to build a  theologically robust Social Graph has remained out of sight.  And as a result,  my value as a developer was severely underestimated.  As a coder and a quick producer of Web apps,  I have long  known I have  a low grade.  But the value is in the location of my skill set.  I know the apps.  I continually read and experiment and play with their pieces.  And I know databases.  Much of my Web development  involves BUILDING the structure that can be used to recover certain datasets in certain situations.  I have written SQL to pull from massive  tables of churches across a large  denomination.  And  I have immersed myself  in every online community tool for 20 years.  I’ve  been a faithful blogger since 2002 and used 3 different blog systems for my main blog,  as well as connecting  my blog  to increasingly numerous “Social Media” tools and systems.  I understand Social Media.  And I understand  the church.  And  I understand and am a devoted participant in theological conversations online.  I cannot say that any of the staffs of  my two previous jobs have  anyone  who comes close to the versatility of this training. 

And yet, here I sit,  still writing about this and have been for years,  and specifically for almost  two years of the explosive growth of Facebook and Twitter,  and the precipitous rise of Webcasting and live streaming  video. For  heaven’s sake , people,  there’s so much to do!  Why does it seem that no one is listening?  Maybe  the answer to that is that nobody is.

[Update: 5/4/11 10:40 am CDT] As I prepare to “Retweet” this post,  I thought I would add a few things about the church organization context I was in as I experienced the frustrations,  and my sense of my role in them.  First,  this is not any kind of laying of blame.  And the lion’s share of that,  in times where I tempted to do so,  I direct at myself.  I direct it at myself for not continuing to try to communicate and articulate and demonstrate what it was I wanted to help these organizations discover and implement. And I also blame myself for what seems to have turned out to be a lousy job of communicating these things when I was “trying”.  

Secondly,  I cannot lay blame outside of myself because I know all too well the difficulty of shifting working priorities.  I allowed myself to “table” all of these efforts to “make change” or  to “encourage and model change” when I was neck-deep in pressing projects and deadlines.  There was rarely any dead time for a developer to be focusing on any “research and development” of new technologies ad Web strategies. 

And third,  I became pessimistic about whether or not I was one who  exuded  enough confidence that would make my vision compelling enough to see it as a real strategy worth pursuing.  And so I allowed myself to become all too often complacent. 

All three of these factors weighed in on the other two.  Confidence level affected articulation and clarity.  Anguish over those made  it easier to “settle” for just taking the work as it came and succumbing to the routine.  All of this  contributed to a lot of depression,  which feeds right back  into energy level, exuding of low confidence,  and draining of ay sense that my ideas, vision,  and concerns were  of much value.

We  all need each other.  In fact,  the church operates that way.  We each have roles and gifts  and callings.  We struggle  in the church to conquer succumbing to the routine and really come together to hear what God is calling us  to do.  I’m in a time of great anxiety and  uncertainty about where that is to happen for me next.]