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Religion and Technology Divide

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by

mwkruse
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Social Edge: Religion and Technology Divide

Faith-based groups (meaning the full range of formal and informal religious communities) are among the most active social sector organizations in many parts of the world. If religious orgs are serious about building and enhancing community, why are they so behind in leveraging the latest and greatest technology tools to do so? And if nonprofit and do-gooder techies are serious about social change, why aren't they tapping into some of the largest and most effective community-based organizations out there – which are faith-based? It's a missed opportunity IMHO [Note: social media jargon for In My Humble Opinion].

Fortunately there are some murmurings. A couple of weeks ago, Time magazine ran a story on U.S. churches using Twitter during their regular services. And the online virtual world of Second Life is fertile ground for a whole range of active faith based communities from across the religious spectrum. You may want to check out this Guided Tour of Spirituality in Second Life.

There are a few great postings on Church 2.0 offering an overview of some of the most cutting edge and technology-relevant happenings that involve faith-based communities in the United States. But they are an exception to the rule. Many traditional religious institutions are experiencing a decline in membership among youth – perhaps in part because they don't fully understand how to communicate in a changed world? Take a look at the official website of the Catholic Church, representing one of the largest religions in the world, and you'll know what I mean.

I sense a lot of fear among traditional religious institutions around embracing and leveraging technology change. …

Comments

9 responses to “Religion and Technology Divide”

  1. Travis Greene Avatar
    Travis Greene

    “If religious orgs are serious about building and enhancing community, why are they so behind in leveraging the latest and greatest technology tools to do so?”
    Is there any data to back up this premise? My gut impression is that there probably are many churches that lag behind, but Powerpoint, church websites, video, Facebook groups, etc have been frequently used in many church settings for years. The “Twitter in church?” meme seems to lack a lot of actual data.

    Reply
  2. Michael W. Kruse Avatar
    Michael W. Kruse

    Yes. I had to pause a moment there as well. I do think there is innovative stuff happening in some sectors of the church (some evangelical congregations, emerging church, etc.) but in other eras, say, Mainline denominations it is much less prevalent. I also wanted to know what his point of reference is.

    Reply
  3. Travis Greene Avatar
    Travis Greene

    My hunch is it’s part of the weird mainline/evangelical flip, where you have quasi-fundamentalist churches with 15 page long faith statements hosting Christian thrash-metal bands and giving away Xboxes, and extremely liberal Episcopal and Unitarian churches where you don’t even really have to believe in God, but the super-traditional worship is still done the same way it was a thousand years ago. It’s weird.

    Reply
  4. Michael W. Kruse Avatar
    Michael W. Kruse

    LOL. Bingo!

    Reply
  5. codepoke Avatar
    codepoke

    I’m not persuaded when a group called “Social Edge” thinks a group called “The Kingdom of God” should do things more like the rest of the world. Social Edge looks like a stealth Christian group, but either way they’re pretty committed to a social media agenda.
    You’re a big fan of church marketing, and I can timidly go with you some distance down that road. Social media, though, seems like a wrong headed approach to ministry. Take Facebook. Facebook allows each user custom-built neighborhood full of hand-picked neighbors. (At least it’s real people, and not Second Life fantasy avatars.) If a church tries to get into Facebook by essentially creating a meta-neighborhood mirroring their real neighborhood, I can kind of see it. If they take a more Coca-Cola-like approach, though, and “market” their brand to people all over the world, the WHOLE reality of the church has been lost.
    Social media can augment real life, but only when it’s kept in it’s place. The Kingdom of God is about love which requires sacrifice, and there’s no way to deliver that gift virtually.
    It’s a tough topic. I’m not trying to say, “If God wanted us to fly He’d have given us wings,” but I am staunchly saying, “Being able to fly to Phoenix every weekend doesn’t make you a functioning member of the church in Phoenix.” Virtual presence is paper-thin unless its substantiated by real-world history and bonding.
    (And don’t give me any cross-talk about us all being different. Everyone’s just like me! And if they say they aren’t, they’re lying … just like I would. 😉 )

    Reply
  6. LeVon Smoker Avatar
    LeVon Smoker

    Codepoke: Nail on the head.
    From an IT geek.

    Reply
  7. Michael W. Kruse Avatar
    Michael W. Kruse

    Social Edge has no Christian ties at all that I’m aware of. Their game is social entrepreneurship. As some social entrepreneurs are Christians, that comes out in the posts by people from their community.
    “Social media can augment real life, but only when it’s kept in it’s place.”
    Well, the operative biblical advice here is all things in moderation. 🙂
    I don’t think anyone I know is suggesting that social media replace face-to-face relationships. We all have a spectrum of relationships from family, to close friends, to friends, to colleagues, to acquaintances.
    I agree that social media can create insular communities but churches, and communities within them, do that all the time without the aid of social media. I’ve found social media helpful in at least these ways.
    1. I get to have some casual relationships with interesting people I never would have met at all otherwise.
    2. Casual online relationships have led to face-to-face encounters that have enriched my life.
    3. I hear more of the specifics about ongoing activities of people I already have a real world relationship with.
    4. I learn a great deal from others with whom I share common interests and I’m able to contribute back to them.
    None of these would possible, or as possible, without social media. I think social media helps resurrect the serendipitous information flows that used to come from being at church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, and some other church even almost weekly.
    Also, back to the marketing question, for those who weren’t part of that earlier discussion, by marketing I’m referring to the holistic sense of being intentional about our presence in the marketplace of competing ideas and communities … not marketing in the colloquial sense of mass media barrages. The primary “marketing” of the Kingdom comes in the example of our shared lives together and in personal testimony.

    Reply
  8. Travis Greene Avatar
    Travis Greene

    Social media can also work against parochialism. It’s harder to normalize my own experience if I am aware of people in Singapore or Johannesburg who see things differently. Or the wide variety of political views held by good people. Watching everybody’s Facebook statuses (stati?) on election night was quite interesting.
    Conversely, media fragmentation can also allow us to build echo chambers of our own devising, since we don’t have to pay any attention to anything we don’t like. You can just stick to your Fox News or Huffington Post, and clearly everybody else is crazy. It’s a double-edged sword.

    Reply
  9. Michael W. Kruse Avatar
    Michael W. Kruse

    Great point!

    Reply

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