March 2007

New Media technologies continue to offer uncharted opportunities for transmitting messages both to groups and to individuals.  Social media, empowered in many instances by their viral nature, are changing the definitions of traditionally accepted mass media forms. 

Interactive media transform our past impressions about the fundamental nature of a "mass" communication.  The goals of, for example, broadcasting, are shifting.  Are broadcasting transmissions designed to talk to many or to listen (to many), to be a mouthpiece for a message or to be a hub for transmitting and receiving messages en masse?

The new media give rise, increasingly, to reciprocal forms of communication; blogging as an infant technology, represents this capacity. Blogging is a means of addressing the public and increasingly a means of hearing from the public. 

The authors of the book The Blogging Church, Brian Bailey & Terry Storch, provide encouragement to Christians to embrace blogging as a new communication tool.

Image Attribution: ramener

Web 2.0 and business collide in a great CNN Money Magazine overview of 25 of the newest online technologies ranging from mobile services to social media.

      Worship House Media

If you feel you're not as innovative as those DIY media geeks, a perfectly acceptable option is to utilize the ministry resources others have already designed for you.  There are plenty of media-driven elements that might enrich your ministry & the first step is simply checking into what's out there.

For example, if you're a church who wants to begin to use multi-media in your services, I can recommend Greg Atkinson's site Church Video Ideas for exposure to a variety of easy to sophisticated options. 

Greg's site is basically packed full of resources and includes recent links to Wing Clips.com, Worship House Media, Flashlight Films, and Clark ProMedia just to name a few.

I was recently contacted by Kent McKeaigg, the Director of Worship House Media, reminding me of the simplicity of a one-stop-shop for church media and video ministry. They provide resources for churches interested in using MiniMovies, Motions, Digital Stills, Software and Editables.  Proof positive that there really are people producing superior media with state of the art appeal designed for ministry.  They are those media geeks with mad skills.

Two weeks ago I blogged about a short video clip that made me think about the scope and the reach of our mass media.  The effects current media transformations may have on the practices of our spirituality and our previously boundaried definitions of what connotes "church" is the continuing focus of this blog. 

Today, I'm posting another clip: Web 2.0 - The Machine Us/ing Us.

Originally made by Professor Mike Wesch from the Digital Ethnography department of Kansas State University, the clip has proven quite viral.  It is excellent evidence that the speed of diffusion is increasing.  And that there's quite a bit of wisdom in Christians pursuing new media technologies. Not because there is anything particularly good or evil about them.  Technologies are nothing but tools.  They can be used for great gain or overlooked in terms of value and significance.

Prof. Wesch blogged "On January 31st I released the 2nd draft of The Machine is Us/ing Us hoping to receive feedback from my colleagues. I sent it to 10 people. Four days later it was the most blogged about video in the blogosphere. It is hard to believe that a little video I created in my basement in St. George Kansas could be seen by over 1.7 million people, be translated into (at least) 5 languages, and be shown to large audiences at major conferences on 6 continents within just one month of its creation.

Of course, all that's doubled now. Professor Wesch and his students are currently studying the Ethnology of YouTube. 

I wouldn't have found this one with out Steve Knight's (SIM) new blog called Kingdom Journalism (HT - Andrew Jones for the link).

Appropriately, since wikis can be quickly added to by anyone with access to them…I'll amend my last post with these links:  first, the Wikinomics book homepage and secondly, author Anthony D. Williams links my post on the Wikinomics blog & I comment.  Here's the actual permalink to view all. 

In case you're wondering what the Church of the future looks like, I think its safe to say that the New Media will have far-reaching effects that we have yet to predict. Thus, the innovative U.S. churches of today, lead currently but they may or may not be on target when it comes to serving tomorrow's global world, particularly in light of unpredictable trajectories.  (HT - Kevin Hendricks for the squidoo lens.)

Ultimately, every currently existing social institution will undergo dramatic change over the next 20 years.  

C.S. Lewis said: "A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village; the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from press and the microphone of his own age."

What will happen, I wonder, when not many but all places are united into an actual (not just theoretical) global village?  And when the scholarship of our day will have the technical facility to access and encompass all previously existing scholarship from every recorded time.  Business is changing; education is changing.  How will our faith circles embrace and be impacted by the New Media?

The 2007 book by Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, explores collaboration and the theory that mass collaboration from participants in the online community creates open systems that produce faster and more powerful results than the traditional closed proprietary systems that have been the norm for private industry and educational institutions. Historically, this would also include the Church.

If peering, sharing, and open-source thinking become the norm and collaboration emerges as the dominant paradigm of our era, how will our faith communities reflect and respond to this new world?  While our theology doesn't change, because Jesus is the same yesterday and today and forever, how will the Church change?

By the way, in case you're interested in what else the immune scholar C.S. Lewis has said, thanks to the collaboration of the semantic web, it's just a click away at Wikiquote.  

Or access any of these other collaborative projects from the open-source Wikimedia Foundation: 

	Wikipedia Free encyclopedia			Wiktionary Dictionary and thesaurus			Wikinews Free content news source
	Wikibooks Free textbooks and manuals			Wikiquote Collection of quotations			Wikisource Free source documents
	Wikiversity Free learning tools			Wikispecies Directory of species			Commons Shared media repository

I was traveling last week and left you the Shift Happens clip to ponder.  While I was away I accessed my blog from an island, both via wifi and from a hard-wired library terminal.  As I was sitting at the library kiosk I was reminded of my graduate work because I interviewed 100's of library card catalog users. Back then, only 20% of all card catalog users were willing to use the electronic terminals.  The early adopters were an easily defined group: white, male, highly-educated and had reported previous computer exposure through either employment or education.

In light of the Shift Happens clip, I'm reminded how fast technological resistance is breaking down but only in some socio-economic segments of society.  And how due to the digital divide, other segments of the world's population will likely be excluded from globalization. 

Also, about a week ago, Read/Write Web posted this Technorati chart called:

Growth of the Blogosphere

It underscores how rapidly the diffusion of an internet technology can be for the "haves".  Because it's a few months old, it's completely outdated.   But, it gives you a good visual for what you already know intuitively. If it's an online technology that's within reach, we want it. 

In October I posted about 100 million websites up.  I'm pretty convinced those numbers don't represent much of Africa.  Just look at a clustrmap. Since my husband and another of our staff pastors are headed there, I want data.  No, not that DATA. Statistics on who's utilizing Web 2.0 technology in Africa.  Who's got any updated research resources?

Since I will be traveling this week, I've decided to post the Shift Happens video clip about globalization in the information age for you to contemplate in my absence. The clip was created by Karl Fisch, and modified by Scott McLeod, courtesy of YouTube.  

It's provocative for three reasons.  First, it's filled with facts that will make you think laterally.  Second, it affirms the concept that the world in changing at a speed and to a degree that we have not yet seen before in human history.  And third, it reminds us that globalization in the information age and the inherent shifts technology will force/facilitate in our world can cause us to think strategically about using online technology for the Kingdom of God.  Or miss the opportunity……

 
Watermark Church, a Dallas, Texas congregation, currently building a permanent facility, is pushing the front edges of the traditional, static website by employing some Web 2.0 social technologies in the development of their site.  They intend to use social networking, user commenting, create online music playlists, and invite members to participate in digitally streaming their testimonies and personal stories, etc. 

Basically, they're moving towards providing heightened levels of interactivity, networking and feedback for website visitors. Their approach is a welcome alternative to the view that social technologies are inherently polluted, dangerous, a waste of time or an expense rather than an investment. 

To preview an example of their excellent use of technology for individuals to tell their life changing stories click here.

Also, Cory Miller at Church Communications Pro just posted in January about a handful of Web 2.0 based ideas here. It's his view (and mine) that the Internet provides untapped ministry potential.  Rather than resisting technology, we could exploit it's potential for the Kingdom.