Technology and Evangelism

Evangelism:

• The spreading of the Christian gospel by preaching or personal witness
• From the Greek to mean "good news" (as is "angel")
• Militant zeal for a cause
• The winning or revival of personal commitments to Christ

These are among some of the definitions of the word readily available to even the most cursory search. Here are some more:

Technology: 

• The application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes
• Machinery and equipment developed from such scientific knowledge
• The branch of knowledge that deals with the creation and use of technical means and their interrelation with life, society,and the environment, drawing upon such subjects as industrial arts, engineering, applied science, and pure science.

Evangelism and technology are either the means or the ends, depending upon in whose hands these noble entities rest.  In isolation, both are something of a detached hobby, and I believe that neither of these things was meant to be, or should be, the ends in themselves. Yes, there will be specialists in the realms of both - but their job is to ensure that both technology and evangelism serve as a means to their ends. 

These definitions were hastily gathered and from the same etymological reference sources (such as they are), and they share some interesting similarities. They speak of the delivery of a message or a concept, to enable a measurable and tangible change. They both exist so that something or someone may change. In this, they have much in common. Indeed, technology and evangelism have shared considerable ground for centuries. One only need note the effect of the advent of the King James Bible on that world-changing technology - printing - to see that this is surely the case. That ground exists between the gospel and iPad, between God's Word and its communication digitally. 

In short, I think that evangelism and technology are natural allies on the frontier to new development. This perhaps sounds odd when considering the majority Christian world which expresses itself in the hitherto, the 'traditional' and in its historic trinketry and artifacts. The challenge is to bring together a message of the past with its contemporary currency and a technology that changes with the seasons. I sense that technology and evangelism have existed together as accidental partners - so imagine the great potential in deliberately placing them together. 

I believe very strongly that evangelism is, at its most effective, a communication at the inter-personal level, and this presents an obvious concern when aligning evangelism and technology. This problem, until recently, seemed insurmountable. We live in a world where individuals separated by many thousands of miles, and several cultural steps, can communicate in real time about what inspires them and nourishes them.  In an age of  the technology that has as much potential to keep humans apart, it is the very vehicle of dialogue that stands the greatest chance of levelling hurdles and overcoming barriers. A Christian blogger, whether they fully believe or not, has an evangelistic impact on the world. They write, people read. A Christian Twitter-monger has the same affect. The joy of technology, most especially in the world of social-media, is that it renders every single voice audible - if only for a brief moment at times. Even a blog that is started and quickly abandoned leaves a footprint that is indelible. Once upon a time, it was believed that 96% of the internet and its traffic revolved around the use or transmission of pornography. It seems that any new technology goes that way in its early days - but the day of evangelism has once again come in the guise of this new printing press - the paperless one. 

Social Media and The Church

To those of you reading this who, by by the very fact of your presence here, the icons contained in this image will have some meaning. 

Then you have the remaining 98% of Christians, church-goers and other people of faith who will have no inkling about what this is all about. They have heard some of the names on the news, but will have cast them aside in the way that they would anything that held no apparent relevance, or that which had the feeling of fad or voodoo about it. I don't blame them - but we have a situation where an increasing gulf is developing between social-media aware Christians, and those who are not. 

This is a potential considerable problem. The world of social media is expanding at a fast pace. Conferences convened for its discussion and consideration are proliferating, including those for social media where it applies to the Church and her life. Already, it is clear to see that small number of communities who engaged positively and meaningfully with social media and those who have cast it aside with quite understandable suspicion. One only needs to examine a few parish websites and this is clearly evident. Yet, in many ways, this is the beginning. These are the pioneer days, the days of the more considerable gamble, the days when those who dare may well 'win'. 

The industrialised world is increasingly living its life through the electronic device. Of that there is no doubt and it is something that I have said here for some time. The young in particular articulate much of their personality through social media, each holding accounts for such websites that allow them to communicate with just about anyone else with a similar account. Millions of us have mobile phones, many of them being smart phones. Not on the ground in real space does life happen for many, but in the interactions conveyed through the virtual world. In other words, any organisation that seeks relevance in this age must embrace that ages's self-expression

...including the church. 

I think that there are compelling reasons, of a cultural nature, why this should be the case. However, such lofty notions are meaningless without a little application (to pardon the pun). I encourage all members of all parish councils to discuss social media and start to embrace the expression of this age - or be left behind in the bow wave of irrelevance. Consider these things:

Marketting: Every organisation worth its salt markets itself in a marketplace where the customer expects to make an informed choice. No longer do we live in places where you buy bread in the one shop because it is the only shop. Church life is without doubt the same, especially with so many Christians being mobile or able to call upon mobility. Christians increasingly go to the church of their choice, not the one that is there by accident of geography. They will travel to make that choice, often some considerable distances. Churches need a presence that extends beyond the flaking-painted board at the gate to the church up the track three miles from the nearest house. The pew-sheet phenomenon is one that is part of a decline - because you have to go in in the first place to take a pew sheet, and if one of those people fails to return for whatever reason, the spiral is downward. People search the internet to find what they want. They use search engines to do that work, and to be out of that listing is to fail to attract those who wish to be attracted. 

Infection: "We have a Gospel to proclaim", but the people are increasingly living lives elsewhere on Sundays and other days of observation. The Gospel is the glorious product that Christians are proud to offer, the product of God's love that is available to all people. I don't think it gets better than that. The question remains about how we infect the world with our Good News - a world that receives its stimulus through gadgetry. The answer is simple - be part of the electronic stream of stimuli. The world is slowly overcoming its innate suspicion of things relating to the internet and cyber-highways. No longer is a perilous thing and one that may land you the happy recipient of dubious imagery and other unsolicited muck. Now, people can browse the internet in some safety. Our children and young people do - and there is where the virus and opportunity of the Gospel will have most meaning to that age group. 

Story-Telling: Blogging and the like are the current means by which this most often undertaken. We are all compelled by stories. When we hear stories of happy days and dark days, we are able to empathise and enter into the narrative - and is the device that Jesus used in his own ministry. Stories are less often in books, and books more often electronic than physical paper-entities. I judge a parish by the stories it tells of itself, its life and its faith journey. The great gift of the technological age is the ease with which imagery can be captured and used. I can be at a joyful event one moment, and able to tell the global community about it within minutes, with imagery, or even sound and film. I believe that people subscribe to a journey of faith, not just a static crowd of Christians. So often, websites give calendars and rotas, but no reportage of what has happened and yet fewer images. An absence of story in the 'output' of a parish states simply that there is no story to tell. Indeed, where would the church of the twenty-first century be if the early church hadn't jotted down its news and events?

Breaking Free of Buildings: The wider world perceive 'church' to be all that pertains to the building. Church life only happens within those medieval stones in the minds of so many. They have always been wrong, but Christians have never cottoned on to that fact even for themselves. Mr and Mrs Typical-Christian will probably spend one or two hours a week in the building, but will be living breathing Christians for the rest of the time. In the past, the faithful parish magazine touched that part of people's life - a little. Blogging and micro-blogging and all other social-media tell the stories of ordinary Christians in ordinary time outside of the church building. Its priests and ministers are starting to acknowledge this too, for we all know that much more of our ministry happens outside of the physical church building than within it. The immediacy and portability of social-media means that Christians can tell of the considerable bits of faith-life hitherto completely un-witnessed. 

Dialogue: It would be fair to say that in the present age, the church is becoming alarmingly polarised. The evangelicals are fearful and suspicious of the Romanising and incense swinging Anglo-Catholics who are, in turn, fearful and suspicious of the text-free converta-a-holics of the evangelical churches. Understanding has all but died, and so polarisation is happening with greater speed and in fearful ways. Indeed, where understanding fails, bigotry and mis-understanding flourishes. Social media, for all its flaws and idiosyncrasies, overcomes much of the ecclesial divide. It also does much to cross gender-divides which also mar the image of 'God is Love plc'. On the whole, and as one with a fair experience of this, I could not tell you, and would not care to tell you, what the ecclesial expression was of the vast majority of those good people with whom I interact.  We talk, we enjoy dialogue, and rarely do we ever inhabit those places that dog dialogue in the temporal church. I would go so far as to say that social media does more for Christian unity than anything else in this day and age. 

I could go on, but will save some for another day, and spare you a longer post now. This is a pivotal moment in many ways and such is the potency and valency of social-media that I predict that in a decade, we will determine the church communities that lived or died by how they embraced the technology and behaviours of this moment. 

Technology and God

A Liturgical Luddite I may be, but in a wider church context I am the nearest you will find to a techno-geek. I am unusual, as a priest, or indeed as an English Christian, in that I use Twitter, I write a blog and I manage a Facebook page. I know more priests who don't do any of these things than those who do any, let alone all, of them. In the diocese where I minister, I am fortunate that one of our bishops (+Alan, of blogging fame) led the way for Christian bloggers, and was then an early Twit. It made a difference to me about what may be viewed as 'acceptable', and before the example set by Bp Alan, this social media lark would have existed way out of that circle of acceptability in my mind - quite wrongly.

Increasing time is being spent by people interacting with the world around them by way of computer technology. Once, a computer was a Space-Invaders Box or a mainframe in a large building somewhere. Now, we can hold the capacity of those mainframes, hundreds of times multiplied, literally on the tip of our finger. It seems that more and more of the expression of industrialised humanity is to be found through an electronic device of one sort or another. This has to have an impact on all aspects of life, including its spiritual side.

Instinct would lead many Christians to a perceive technology as 'against' God. Technological advance connects people in many ways yet enables that in a profoundly disconnecting way. I can talk (literally or figuratively) to hundreds of people but without leaving the house, if I so chose. This can be viewed favourably or not, though I am now tending towards the positive these days. I am now in touch with a far wider sphere of people than ever before, and people who edify me and improve my life and aid my thinking in many good ways.

I have been musing this for a while now, and with the aid of Twitter and other 'streams of consciousness' have gathered much about the ways that technology and the implicit theologies of our Christian lives are beginning to fuse meaningfully. At a recent gathering called 'Thinking Digital Conference' (not a thing I attended, but followed its Twitter stream, so the next best thing) I saw a great deal about what the possibilities are for that fusion. There will be another gathering, Open Source at Pentecost Festival 2011 that will attend to this very subject. For this blog post, though, a couple of my own thoughts in splendid isolation:

Distinctiveness of Spirituality - A matter that was covered at TDC was, more or less, the possibility of a 'man space' (though not in any religious sense, but it got me thinking). I think that it is possible to talk about distinctiveness of gender spirituality without falling headlong into the debates on ordination and consecration, and to throw the baby out with the bathwater would be sad. The simple fact is, my experience of loving God is rooted entirely and squarely in my own existence as a male of the species. For well over a decade I have felt a very slight need to apologise for being male in the church and whilst I understand why other balances need to made, feel very strongly that our matriarchal church (which it is, at ground level) has left little space for male spirituality. You have Mother's Onion, World Women's Day of Prayer, WATCH - but I cannot name a group purely for men. We just daren't. This is a sad thing, but one that is increasingly superseded by technology where we can 'App' our lives as we wish. Technology allows us such levels of mutual individuality that we can be who we are without impinging on the rights of others to do the same. I love women, women in the church, women running the show if they wish - but I have never once wanted to give up being a man, or to be proud of the spirituality that I have been given. 

Infectiousness of the Gospel - This is very much 'my thing'. I have said here and elsewhere on numerous occasions that Christians are infected with the 'virus' of the Gospel. By any and all means necessary I will communicate that virus as widely as I can, and technology allows that in ways that are still not fully clear. The thing about "mission" that I dislike is how contrived and deliberate it seems to me. It seems, at times, to be exploitative and I don't favour that approach at all. Like a virus, I can no more force a person to become infected of the Gospel that I can of the common cold, with trying among some anti-social behaviours. However, I try to be authentically me (see above for the means), and through blogs, Twitter and Facebook, I seem to attract people to the Gospel without making a specific effort. I yap to all sorts on Twitter under the name @FrDavidCloake, and if I can be normal, fun, humourous, grumpy, angry and all those other things that normal people do under this label, then the world can know that at least this part of the church and its Gospel is not beyond reach in some holy cavern somewhere. 

Accessibility -  A little while ago I wrote an essay on a very narrow little topic that means nothing to almost anyone except me and the essay marker. However, I experimented with technology and its preparation. I had no books on the subject at hand, and I had no real idea what I needed to say, but the internet grants us all such considerable access to every conceivable theology and theologian. I could cite Augustine of Hippo, other Early Fathers in their native languages. I could access any number of versions of the Bible and commentaries (from all centuries) to match them all. I could translate into languages long lost or translate from them. I could find scholarly works that were written mere months ago. I did the essay, and only got brought up for not using physical books. Defence rests, m'lud. I know that millions of Christians (and non) are delving into the internet to edify their seeker experience. Technology allows people to learn and therefore to teach things that until recently were lost in books only to be found in libraries or vicarages. We can teach our children the Gospel in ways I wouldn't have been able to dream of even a decade ago. Beyond this, and through social media specifically, we can discuss our thoughts with spheres of people and indeed experts from all over the world. I have never for a moment thought that God had wanted all his God-stuff to be a privileged secret for the practitioner minority - and now it never will be again.

In general, technology and social media grant many people a 'way in' to theology, praxis, dialogue and even belief and discipleship. That a priest of limited education but of all faith can write words that mean something to people in Angola (this I know to be a fact), then God has a use for me I hadn't even predicted at ordination. This is the tip of a very large iceberg and I would welcome opinion. However, without technology and social media, God's plan for me would never have found life.