Here’s an excerpt from the Echo Conference blog to celebrate Echo Conference ‘09….

One of the things we’re most excited about for this year’s Echo experience is our panel discussion featuring Bobby Gruenewald, Carlos Whittaker, Conway Edwards, Cynthia Ware, and Scott Hodge.  The panel will be a free-flowing conversation that covers current and future trends in the intersection of media, technology, and the Church.  Each of these leaders has a unique and valuable perspective to share, and we’re looking forward to hearing what they have to say.  The panel will be moderated by Scott McClellan from COLLIDE Magazine (but he promises to stay out of the way and let the panel do most of the talking).

If you have questions for our panel, you can dm me by adding me on twitter @ http://twitter.com/cynthiaware.

“Communication technologies change, but the fundamentals of good, true, and beautiful communication are age-old.  How can we communicate better with one another—along with or sometimes in spite of new technologies?”  These are the thoughts of this week’s media scholar and Blog of the Weekend, Dr. Quentin J. Schultze.

Dr. Schultze (the “e” is silent) is a professor, writer, and speaker who earned a Ph.D. in communication from the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois.  He is the Chair and Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  I was fortunate enough to participate in a devotional he presented at the now defunct Internet Ministry Conference several months ago.

Dr. Schultze’s scholarly publications have appeared in several dozen journals.  He has also written over a hundred articles for general-interest periodicals.  He has been quoted in most of the major media, including The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Fortune, the Chicago Tribune, USA Today, and many other publications. He has been interviewed by CNN, CBS Radio, NBC TV, National Public Radio, and dozens of additional radio and television stations.

Professor Schultze received the Presidential Award for Exemplary Teaching at Calvin College in 2000.  He has consulted for a wide range of non-profit and for-profit organizations on communication-related issues and opportunities.  And he mentors communication scholars and practitioners across North America.

His  book Habits of the High-Tech Heart addresses some of the issues surrounding the new media and Christianity. I highly recommend the conscientious & prudent mindset of Dr. Schultze.  He says, “much of my research has focused on the impact of communication technologies on groups, corporations, families, schools, and religious institutions.  I am particularly interested in how new communication technologies such as email, blogs, twittering, and podcasting are affecting society and individuals.  Are they making us more responsible and compassionate?  More effective at work?  Do they improve our communication?  Are we more patient and empathetic because of new technologies?  Or are we more prone to gossip and snap judgments about others?  How can we use the new technologies wisely and well?”

In terms of leadership combining a scholarly approach to the evaluation of new media and the church, Dr. (to be) Mark Brown stands out.  His personal website, Brownblog, provides fresh thinking about Christian ministry.

Mark, who was the National Director of the Scripture Union in New Zealand for three years, is now the CEO of The Bible Society in New Zealand.

He is an Anglican Priest and holds the role of Priest Assistant at the Cathedral of St. Paul in Wellington.

I first became aware of Mark’s ministry in mid-2007, when he founded an Anglican Church in the virtual world of Second Life.  Since only a handful of people have accomplished Second Life congregations, Mark’s ministry caught my attention.

His innovative approach to ministry has also included many Facebook experiments including the Status Bar Sermonette Movement.  His articles, like The Digital Revolution and the Church, can be downloaded as pdf’s here: Dr. Mark Brown’s Downloads.

Since Christian leaders, especially pastors, are often “wired” for serving others, it’s not really a surprise that online communication technologies can sometimes trick us, tempting us to serve them rather than serving us.

No matter which technologies you and your staff elect to use, from Google docs to Yammer, we can probably all agree, the most common and far-reaching culprit in our technological clutter is our out of control email.

Contrary to what many of our tech-savvy congregation members might think, it’s often pastors who have the least time to learn basic email processing techniques.  And to aggravate the condition, the more staff support, the more likely we may be to handing off the basics, creating a knowledge & training gap.  Pastors can easily end up as underdogs when it comes to out muscling the email avalanche.

Mastering your email is absolutely essential for freeing your time for other things.  Furthermore, several fundamental principles provide a simple way to get ahead of your inbox and stay “in control” of your email.

Whether you subscribe to Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero style or some other form of ordered system, you will never like your computer the way you could with your email lording over you.

Michael Hyatt, President & CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, has blogged extensively on email techniques on his blog From Where I Sit (see: Yes, You Can Stay on Top of Email).  He processes about 100 emails an hour and still has ample time to Twitter.  Think that’s not possible?

Check out some of his system (like not touching the mouse!)….

1. Empty your inbox everyday.
2. Don’t get bogged down, keep moving.
   • Do—take action on the task now. I follow David Allen’s two-minute rule. If I can do what is being requested in less than two minutes, I do it immediately. This gets stuff off your to-do list before it ever gets on it. This has the added advantage of making you look responsive.
   • Delegate—pass the task along to someone else. I’m not talking about “passing the buck.” But oftentimes someone else is better equipped to fulfill the sender’s request. Dawson Trotman once said, “I purposed never to do anything others could or would do when there was so much of importance to be done that others could or would not do.” In other words, try to focus on where you add value and offload everything else.
   • Defer—consciously decide you will do the task later. This only applies to asks you cannot complete in two minutes or less or can’t delegate to someone else. You can either add the task to your to-do list or schedule an appointment with yourself to complete it. Fortunately, in Entourage, I convert an email message to a task or an event (i.e., appointment) with a single keystroke.
   • Delete—determine if you might need the information later. If not, delete it. My own assumption is that if it’s really important, someone, somewhere else in the world, has a copy of it.
   • File—if you think you might need the information, file it. But do not create an elaborate set of file folders. This is the single most important piece of advice I can give you. Just file everything in one folder called “Processed Mail.” If it is more complicated than this, it will lead to procrastination. Trust me on this. You will have to decide, Should I file this under Tami because it is from her or under Max because it is about him? And then what happens if the email covers more than one subject? Do you make copies of the email and put one copy under each folder? Things can get complicated fast.Forget all of that. File your email in one folder and let your email or system software (e.g., “Spotlight”) find it when you need it. The search capabilities of almost every modern email program will enable you to put your hands on any message whenever it is necessary. It may take you a few minutes longer to find the message using this method, but this is offset by the hours you waste trying to figure out how to file your messages.
3. Use keyboard shortcuts and avoid the mouse.
4. Let email rules filter the low-priority stuff.

Like Michael, I also have a Bacn folder for email newsletters, receipts, and other automatically-generated reading material including almost every notice I get from Facebook!  “Spam” is unsolicited bulk email.  “Bacn” is solicited bulk email.  This simple trick (thank you Tony Steward) gives me control over incoming and thus saves me valuable processing steps (read: time).

Today I’m presenting “Leveraging Technology to Support Community” at the Group Life Conference.  I’ll upload it to SlideShare when I have time so you can access it.  My experience at Willow Creek has been amazing and being with scores of people who are desperate to learn how to serve others better has been invigorating.

Yesterday, in an afternoon session, Mark Batterson asked the attenders (about 2000, I’d say) how many were using Twitter and got about a 5% response rate.  Also, in that session, we had an opportunity to use a new system for texting in responses live during the keynote sessions.  Everyone got out their phone and we had a tutorial walking us thru how to text in our answers.  Of course, the instuctor was a 12 year old girl.  I’m going to post a more detailed review of this product within the next two weeks.

Following my presentation I’m heading off to attend a series of other presentations by friends who are also here.  It’s gonna be a packed day.  Unfortunately, while I’m speaking, I will miss Scot McKnight’s “Women in Ministry”.  Gotta download that one.

When I changed my domain name and upgraded my WordPress from 2.3.3 to 2.5 I noticed a lot of things around here were neglected.  I found a pile of 51 unpublished, incomplete drafts.  Time to delete.  I found mis-loaded images, broken links, outdated blogroll entries, etc.  I could use a couple of days of site keeping. 

No posting while I clean it up.  Oops!  Too late, already published.

Here's the new URL: http://thedigitalsanctuary.org/ so you can update your blogrolls.

What's on your electronic 'to do' list?

Some people are skeptical about the internet being a viable tool for sharing one's faith.  While some argue about the validity of such efforts, others are mobilizing resources and taking action. 

For example, the Internet Evangelism Coalition, an umbrella group of evangelical Christian organizations who share a vision for online outreach, backs the Internet Evangelism Day, a day set aside each year to draw attention to promoting usage of the net for evangelism.  Some of the partnering organizations supporting this day include:

• American Tract Society

• Billy Graham Center

• Brown Governance

• Campus Crusade for Christ

• Christian Broadcasting Network

• Christianity Today

• Evangelism Explosion

• ForMinistry.com

• Gospel.com

• Mission America

• Willowcreek