Drop into the depths with God

No one descends with God and comes up the same. God moves forward and drags those of us too stupid and too courageous along. Because it takes that magical and mystical blend of sheer stupidity and sheer courage to drop into the depths with God. ~ Dirty Sexy Ministry blog

I just finished reading The Bread of Angels by Stephanie Saldana. Truly, it showed me how amazing it can be if we just listen to God. Stephanie traveled deep into her doubt and did exactly what this quote from the blog says -- she dropped into the depths with God. Short of traveling to Syria and spending time in a desert monastery, I keep dreaming about how that time with God can become a reality for me. Are there other women in my life who are searching for this kind of depth of spirituality like me?

Visual Wonder to Deliver a Message

Marian Bantjes: Intricate beauty by design

I was watching this video from TED.com the other day because of Marian's fascinating artwork. I am a visual person and I love art so this video caught my attention. If you are interested, the video breaks down how she creates her fabulously intricate designs, including some made from sugar that are just out of this world.

Anyway, about 2/3 of the way through the video, she is talking about the importance of visual representation of ideas, and she says, this is one thing that religion has gotten right -- their use of "visual wonder to deliver a message." I would have to agree. And it's not necessarily the most elaborate or expensive that sets the stage for faith. On a mission trip to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, I wandered into a house worship service. In this house, they had a table up front covered in a table cloth. There was an open bible in the center and on each side of it were two sparkly metalic sprays -- a little tacky anywhere else, but this was a poor, Mayan village about 100 miles inland from Cancun. It was not nearly as elaborate as Marian's creations, but it did create wonder (and take the place of candles).

With our ready access to the visual through media and technology, I wonder where visual wonder will lead us? Already we can use intriguing backgrounds to add to the message of our music. We can create diagrams and videos to better communicate the message of our sermons. We have access through technology to much of the world's most famous artwork. What are the possibilities with visual wonder in delivering the gospel message?

Two pages from Marian's new book.

Follow up on Education Goal

My goal for this class was:

My learning goal for this class is to explore some ways that media and technology can be used to encourage learning communities. This fits under goal 1e familiar with a variety of ways of supporting, facilitating and trouble-shooting learning communities.

I would like to explore the how technology can open up new ways for the members to engage in learning communities in the church.

In working toward this goal, I discovered the following:

• The dynamics of media are not random, there are patterns and trends that explain this phenomenon. Those patterns and trends can help learning communities reach more of its members and potential members by expanding the reach of the message. (Gleaned from Shirky's book)
• Not one approach is magically going to reach everyone. The days where we can put something in the church newsletter and expect it to reach all are gone. But maybe that's not a bad thing. Now with getting the word out through many channels, we can be less exclusive and reach others beyond our church walls. (From blog discussions)
• There is a gap between the younger and the older regarding technology, or maybe we should say there is a gap between those who use technology and those who don't. (The numbers just generally fall along age lines.) As church leaders and in learning communities, we must be aware of that gap and work to gather rather than separate. (From blog posts)
• God works in many ways and in many places -- even through media and technology ;)
• Be willing to risk and try and also be willing to fail. (The importance of that came out through this class, but it's also true for all of life!)
• Be aware of what it being said through my media approaches, but also be aware of the message that is being conveyed by what is not said (from Mary Hess's book)
• The final piece of this goal will be accomplished as I finished up my project. My final project was to design a way for people of our church to deepen their faith through engaging with the scriptures for each week. I set up a blog and have invited several people to participate during the month of July. After I finish the project and determine the best approach to implementing it, we will evaluate taking the project church-wide and open it to all this fall.

Have a great end of the summer, everyone! Blessings!

Leadership in the future

I was watching this video from Clay Shirky hoping to learn what he had to say about leadership in light of this revolution of media and technology. Most of it was information we had read about in the book for class, but near the end he tells a story of the Linux Operating System creator and how he leads. Shirky says Linux is going in a direction that Linus himself does not care about, but he realizes that this is where the people who are working on it want it to go. The power of the people is what is driving Linux, not the power of one leader.



To me, this relates directly to ministry. It is becoming less and less about where the 'pastor' wants to lead than it is where the people want to go. I think God works in that. That's how we got the Apostle's Creed and the doctrine of the Trinity. It was a group that decided to go that direction. It was a group that worked out the details. It was a group that came to enough of a consensus that it gave us these important church doctrines.

The challenge will be in churches where the clericalism of the pastor may not line up with the wants of the people. If the pastor is used to being a strong leader and a stronger decision-maker and the people are used to having more say, then there are different expectations that will have to be worked out.

The term used to be congregationally-owned ministry. Maybe now it'll just be 'postmodern.'

Evaluate the class

Clay Shirky's book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations was the first one I read before the on-campus class this June. I have to say that I was skeptical of the book because the title is not a real grabber nor did it give me much insight into the content of the book until I actually got into it. Then I loved it so much I was reading portions of it to my husband while we were driving. It grabbed me because it was such an academic/sociological look at something many think is just a trend or a passing fad. It was fascinating to look at the ramifications of the internet, social networking, and electronic communications. These changes are real and the internet is not going away so we all have to think about how this affects our ministry.

Mary Hess's book Engaging Technology in Theological Education: All That We Can't Leave Behind did a great job of giving us the background knowledge behind this distributed learning program of which many of us are a part. It explained the meaning and reasoning behind many aspects of our program. It was also a good review of the Parker Palmer book we read for Education I, and it pulled what we learned in that class into our current context.

Michael Wesch's video An Anthropological Introduction to You Tube also was a great resource for this class to make us aware of the dynamics and the incredible mass behind this phenomenon. Again, it informed me of the consequences of these huge shifts in our world and made me think about ways to use YouTube and other resources in ministry.

The on-campus portion of the class was informative and at a great pace. I didn't feel like we were just trying to cram in a ton of information in that limited amount of time. It felt like we had a chance to experience some great activities in person -- as a DL student, those 'in-person' times are pretty rare and very valuable. The amount of time we spent there on Friday evening and Saturday morning went by fast for me. I thought it was a great way to do the class with some work before, a face-to-face opportunity and then more work online following.

My only problem was that I underestimated how much time I would spend reading and commenting on other people's blogs. It has pushed me right up to the deadline of the class. (Part of that was that I put this class on the back burner while I finished up work in my other two classes.) I am really enjoying the depth of the information and the 'time' I get to spend with each of my other classmates through these blogs. It would be really tough to add very many others to the class. I think the amount of blogs we have to work on is about right.

Thank you for this opportunity to explore more of the technological side of ministry. I do okay on computers and with other electronic media, but it always helps to have an assignment and a class to push me to learn something new.

What does it all mean?

This video was posted by a classmate of mine (thanks Tracy!). While it is playing, it made me want to say "WOW!" The facts in it are truly mind-boggling. But the final question was the best: "So what does it all mean?" The amount of information, the speed of change, the number of people....the facts can overwhelm. But really the question is the one that finished the video about what it all means. And even more important is where is God in all of this? I know our professor, Mary, has asked us that question, and I have asked it previously in this blog. I don't have any big insight into this video, but I wanted to link it on my blog for future use. Loved it.

From "Edit then Publish" to "Publish then Edit"

As a journalism major and an avid reader, I have been trained to edit, edit, edit and then publish. It must be perfect before going to print. That's why Clay Shirky's chapter on "publish and then edit" is particularly intriguing to me. It is such a shift in my thinking that it goes beyond me just saying that it's wrong. To me, this concept is so "out there" that I really have to stop and ponder how that could even work.

Then I thought about our confirmation class this past year. Our Youth Director separated the 9th graders from the younger students to give them the opportunity to discuss/explore their own relationship with God. One of the underlying goals was to give them the chance to express their doubts and their questions in a safe environment. It really was giving them a chance to "publish" their theology by giving them a place to lay it out (verbally), and then through discussion, to hone in on what they believe, what they question and what their doubts were. It was an interesting process -- frustrating at times -- but an important one.

I have met several people throughout my two years at my current church who were completely turned off by religion because they had serious questions about their faith when they were in confirmation. Those questions were either blown-off by the pastor or the students were too afraid to voice them.

So how can we be more open to "publish" first in our churches and "filter" later as people work out their faith questions? This confirmation class was one experiment. What is happening in your churches to allow people to talk out/work out their faith?

Cake is to Encyclopedia AS Love is to Money?

"We are used to a world where little things happen for love and big things happen for money. Love motivates people to bake a cake and money motivates people to make an encyclopedia. Now, though, we can do big things for love."
~Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody (p. 104)

Technology is changing our ecology, according to Clay Shirky. These are not just little changes in our world. The changes from technology are incredibly pervasive and deep. One of the biggest changes is in what motivates people to do things. As quoted above, Shirky says that big things used to happen for money. As the world of technology changes and changes us, what does our world look like if we now do big things for love instead? Does this get us closer to the kingdom of God here on earth?

Community

Community -- Definitions from Free Online Dictionary
1. a. A group of people living in the same locality and under the same government.
b. The district or locality in which such a group lives.

2. a. A group of people having common interests: the scientific community; the international
business community.
b. A group viewed as forming a distinct segment of society: the gay community; the
community of color.

3. a. Similarity or identity: a community of interests.
b. Sharing, participation, and fellowship.

I was re-watching the Michael Wesch video "An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube." In it, Wesch says that YouTube is really "a story about new forms of expression and new forms of community and new forms of identity." This got me thinking about how 'community' is changing -- not just within YouTube, but in the world today.

I found this definition of community on Free Online Dictionary. Feel free to look it up yourself, if you want to. The first definition (and usually the most common one) is:

1. a. A group of people living in the same locality and under the same government.
b. The district or locality in which such a group lives.

To be honest, this only applies to a very small group of people who are directly involved in my life. Sure, there are quite a few people who live in my town and even in my county, but there are so many more people who affect my life on a daily basis who live outside of that area.

The second definition is:

2. a. A group of people having common interests: the scientific community; the international
business community.
b. A group viewed as forming a distinct segment of society: the gay community; the
community of color.

Again, some of the people in my world would fit into this category. All the students and faculty and alumni at Luther are part of the Luther Community. And I do hang out with a bunch of Lutherans so that would be an over-arching community in my life. But it doesn't truly describe most of the people who love and care about my life.

Finally, the third definition is:

3. a. Similarity or identity: a community of interests.
b. Sharing, participation, and fellowship.

Again, 3a doesn't truly define my most significant community. So we turn to the very last definition which I think should be the new first definition. This is the new way we view community.

I am an online seminarian with classmates all over the United States. We have diffierent interests and different family and work situations, and we definitely do not live in the same district or locality. But with these classmates, the most important part of our community is our sharing, our participation with each other and our fellowship.

From Michael Wesch's video about YouTube, I am seeing that my classmates and I are not alone in this thought. There are random groups of people all over the internet who share, participate and have fellowship through this incredible medium.

So what does this mean for our churches when community is not even defined the way it was 10 or 15 years ago? It changes us. It changes what it means when we read the Bible. For example in the gospel lesson for July 11, the lawyer asks Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?" Good question. Who is our neighbor? If our community can be worldwide at the touch of a button, who is our neighbor?

I love what I am learning about technology in this class, but it is sure making me think about things differently!

Common Ground

My parents are techy for their age. My mom is on Facebook. They can e-mail, and they have an iPod touch for checking weather, sports scores and newspaper stories. My in-laws just got their first computer. Even thought they are from the same generation, there was a big gap between them. When I would leave for classes at seminary, I would have to type up the schedule for my kids and print it out for my father-in-law since he's my backup kid-runner. Now that he has a computer, I just e-mail him the schedule and he has it. I posted a video of my son at his last guitar jam, and I was able to share it with all the grandparents. We all now have that common media language and can talk on common ground.

This summer I am taking three classes -- Christology, Aging in Ministry and this Media in Christian Education class. This cartoon made them all come together. As I was reading for my Aging final paper, the article was talking about how quickly the world is changing now. Only 100 years ago, each generation could generally understand the previous generation and what they had lived through. Today, however, life changes so fast that the gap from generation to generation is larger than ever. Seeing the gap between my fairly-techy parents and my newly-techy in-laws makes me think that with technology the gap between the old and the young could be even wider than ever.

Given these fast-growing gaps, where do we find the common ground to allow us to be a Christian community? How can we understand each other when the gaps are so large? In Mary Hess's book Engaging Technology in Theological Education, she reminds us that when working with technology, we need to ask "How is God revealing Godself within this medium, and how are we opening ourselves up to that revelation or blinding ourselves to its possibility?" (p. 31)

I also think these same questions can be asked to help us bridge the gaps in our Christian communities. We can ask these questions about anyone who is on the other side of the gap from us. How is God revealing Godself within that person? How are we opening ourselves up to that revelation or are we blinding ourselves to its possibility? By finding how God is working on the other side of the gap, we can find that common ground and strengthen our Christian community.

My learning goal for this class is to explore some ways that media and technology can be used to encourage learning communities. This fits under goal 1e familiar with a variety of ways of supporting, facilitating and trouble-shooting learning communities.

This past year, my partner pastor and I led a group on a Walk Through the New Testament where we had a group of people reading New Testament texts daily from January through the end of May. If they followed the plan, they would have read the entire New Testament in that timeframe. As we led the class, we found that we needed several ways of including people in the process. As a result, we had a Facebook page, we put the handouts on the church webpage, we met face-to-face every other week for question-and-answer, and we participated in the online webcast of Dr. Matthew Skinner’s Walk Through the New Testament class. Different members took part in the different learning communities, and some members chose to just follow the plan on their own without any outside support from us.

I would like to explore the how technology can open up new ways for the members to engage in learning communities in the church.

Cool blogs!

Hey, class!

Here are a couple of blogs that I read that are pretty cool. The first is for those of us who are visual learners called Visual Theology.

The other is for those who like writers who are a little different called Unorthodoxology.

Enjoy!

Broken Fall

We can go through this life in many ways. Some of us are more cautious -- watching and observing and checking things out before jumping in. Some of us jump first and then check things out later. Some of us are somewhere on a scale that ranges from one end to the other. But no matter what, we're all trying to figure our way through without the benefit of previous experience. There are no "do overs." It's just this one life that we are falling through. Maybe a little like Alice in Wonderland when she falls into the hole under the big tree. We don't really know what's coming at us or when we might land or where. For me, that fall is sometimes scary, sometimes exciting, sometimes confusing, and sometimes painful. The only thing that can break my fall is God. God's saving grace is what breaks my fall through this otherwise crazy world, and keeps me from crashing. God is always at work in my life, but often I don't remember to look for it.