Archive for February 2008
The Web 2.0 Pastor – Facebook and Status Updates
Web 2.0 Logos , Terinea social networks, originally uploaded by terinea.
For years I’ve been reading blogs of people in our community; it was a great way to know how there week was going between weekends.
Although blogging has slowed down–at least in my circles, Facebook has picked up and I find a similar phenomenon by reading their status updates. (Thankfully, Facebook makes this easy by providing a page and RSS feed with all my friends’ updates.)
Some people wonder why I spend time on Facebook; is that really ministry? I think so, and I recently found an article that captures how I can more effectively care for them as a result of following them on Facebook. The article speaks of Twitter, but the idea is the same as the Facebook status:
Individually, most Twitter messages are stupefyingly trivial. But the true value of Twitter — and the similarly mundane Dodgeball, a tool for reporting your real-time location to friends — is cumulative. The power is in the surprising effects that come from receiving thousands of pings from your posse….
When I see that my friend Misha is “waiting at Genius Bar to send my MacBook to the shop,” that’s not much information. But when I get such granular updates every day for a month, I know a lot more about her. And when my four closest friends and worldmates send me dozens of updates a week for five months, I begin to develop an almost telepathic awareness of the people most important to me.
It’s like proprioception, your body’s ability to know where your limbs are. That subliminal sense of orientation is crucial for coordination: It keeps you from accidentally bumping into objects, and it makes possible amazing feats of balance and dexterity.
Twitter and other constant-contact media create social proprioception. They give a group of people a sense of itself, making possible weird, fascinating feats of coordination.
For example, when I meet Misha for lunch after not having seen her for a month, I already know the wireframe outline of her life: She was nervous about last week’s big presentation, got stuck in a rare spring snowstorm, and became addicted to salt bagels. With Dodgeball, I never actually race out to meet a friend when they report their nearby location; I just note it as something to talk about the next time we meet.
It’s almost like ESP, which can be incredibly useful when applied to your work life. You know who’s overloaded — better not bug Amanda today — and who’s on a roll. A buddy list isn’t just a vehicle to chat with friends but a way to sense their presence. Are they available to talk? Have they been away? This awareness is crucial when colleagues are spread around the office, the country, or the world. Twitter substitutes for the glances and conversations we had before we became a nation of satellite employees.
[source]
[ht: AcademHack]
[related post on FB and YM and one on Twitter in ministry]
[9/5/08 update: good related article on facebook here]
Emerging Church / Emergent
prayer wall, originally uploaded by ratterrell.
Over the years, I’ve gotten a handful of questions on the emerging church and / or emergent. Although I have not read this in total, I think this blog series (with charts!) may be helpful to some. [Please note that you may also download a PDF of the entire series.]
Elia
Ideas for your church website
Ideas for your church website – Good list of, uh, ideas for your church website. 
