Fund Raising Auction for Chris Cowan

I'm finally getting around to holding our auction for the altar-hanging that Chris Cowan, Heather Bogacz and I created during worship class this summer. The medium is acrylic and the paper is giant 2 sticky notes (we are resourceful!). You can bid by posting a comment to this blog. Bidding will remain open until August 8 at midnight (just like online class deadlines!) This is firm. I will take the last bid posted before midnight. Don't even try to post at 12:01 am on August 9!!!! All the funds will go to support Chris Cowan as she serves as an EAPPI through the Church World Service. The winning bidder can make their payment directly to Chris using the instructions on her blog.

Shipping for the auction will be on me. Thanks for bidding!

To follow Chris as she prepares to be an EAPPI in Palestine and to follow her during her time there, read her blog and spread the word!

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.