True Christian community

I recognize this blog has been left derelict lately, but it seems a good place to share this, which will also end up on my Facebook profile.  It will not end up on my other blog, Pray Around The World, because it's not relevant, but I mention that as an excuse to get in a plug for it, because I've been devoting a lot of time to it and haven't yet seen what God plans to do with it.  I could use some traffic over there, is what I'm saying.

We toss around the word "friend" pretty loosely, and I was thinking last night that what I really treasure are true friends.  Another phrase I use too loosely is "Christian community," which tends to be a substitute for "church," "group of people I hang out with at Church," or "random people who will occasionally mention God separate from cursing."

But true Christian community is what I want and need, and true Christian community is made up of the truest of friends.

The Catholic writer and speaker Matthew Kelly talks about "The Best Version of Yourself."  In fact, he talks and writes about it A LOT.  He even registered the domain "theBestVersionofYourself.com," and if you have ever heard him speak or read his stuff (both of which are well worth your time), you have heard/read that phrase umpteen-gazillion times.  God wants us to be the best version of ourselves.  We are called to become the best version of ourselves.  The purpose of being here is to become the best version of ourselves.  You get the picture.  (N.B. Kelly is similar in many, but not all, ways to a secular speaker/author who deals in the same general message, Marcus Buckingham.  And not just because they both have funny accents.)

And he's right.  He's also right that a true friend is one who helps you become the best version of yourself.  And true Christian community is nothing more or less than a network of friends devoted to helping each other become the best versions of themselves.  But how?

Here are the elements I've identified as ones I'd like to find in friends and in Christian community to help me become the best version of myself.  They are also the things I feel most called to offer to others who are fully devoted to becoming the best versions of themselves.

1. Prayer.  True friends pray for each other.  I would love to be part of a Christian community in which every member prays for every other member every day.
2. Care.  True friends show concern for each other.  They check up on each other.  They help each other out when they see a need.
3. Share.  I can't become the best version of myself alone; I need to learn from others.  As I read and study the faith and learn from the lives of saints and sinners, I want to share what I've learned and soak in what my friends are learning.
4. Dare.  This is the area where most people fall short, or at least it's where I fall short and just about everyone I know does, too.  True friends dare each other to get better; they challenge each other not to settle for who they are today, or for what the easiest next step is.  They lovingly and prayerfully challenge their friends to reach for their goal.  Most people don't do this, because they don't want to come off as self-righteous, arrogant, or preachy.  A few people do this, but usually they do it without establishing the bonds that come from mutual prayer, sharing and caring (so they come off as self-righteous, arrogant and preachy).  But I believe you can thread that needle; the people closest to me, who I know want the best for me can challenge me that way, and I wish they'd do it more often.
5. Bear.  The flip side of daring friends to grow is bearing with their weaknesses and faults.  Christians get a bad rap for focusing on judging each others' sins instead of loving each other in spite of those sins, and, let's face it, the evidence to support that rap is pretty thick.  A true Christian community, a true friend, can bear with your faults, not by pretending they aren't there, but by loving you no less because of them.

The essential thread that runs through all these things (and doesn't remotely rhyme, by the way) is mutuality.  You can say you do all these things for a friend, but let's face it; if you don't make yourself as vulnerable as you want others to be, or if you see your friend as an object to be worked on rather than a fellow subject to accompany, all these things fall flat.

So there you go, in a pithy rhyming bundle: Prayer, Care, Share, Dare, Bear.  I would love to find a Christian community of friends who are whole-heartedly sold-out to a commitment to do those five things for each other.  Would you?

We've moved!

The "Pray Around The World" project has moved to p-a-t-w.blogspot.com but this blog may continue with news and thoughts on church, state and social media.

Fact-list for Paraguay

WCC

FIDES

CIA


(Wikipedia is pretty disappointing on this front, so I'm leaving them off.)

Uruguay fact-links

WCC

CIA

Wikipedia

FIDES - Most recent story appears to be about the theological virtue of the World Cup.  I didn't mention that 3 of the last 4 countries the WCC has prayed for were in the World Cup, and I think they are all advancing to the round of 16.  Just sayin'.

Argentina fact-links

WCC

News stories from FIDES on Argentina

A little bit in Wikipedia

And the granddaddy of them all, the CIA

What does the WCC think we should pray for

The World Council of Churches (link at the top of my blog) has a list of pray-fors for all three countries:

Intercessions

Give thanks for:

• Lay persons who participate in local communities of faith, church leaders who continue to nurture congregations, and instructors who educate and nurture pastors.
• Composers and poets who have brought new songs to the churches of these countries and to Christians all over the world.
• Bishops and pastors who take courageous stands on behalf of their people.

Pray for:

• Families and friends of those who were murdered or disappeared in Argentina and Uruguay.
• Guidance to those in the government of Paraguay as they work to remove corruption and bring justice to those who have abused power.
• Those who experience poverty and struggle for daily bread, who live without security, safety and shelter.
• Those who must live far from their families and homes in order to make a living and provide for their families.

Prayer

God of life, 
you put in human beings 
the imprint of your image and likeness 
and made us to participate with you in your creation. 
Forgive our incapacity to respect and protect life in all its forms. 

God of justice, 
you call us to travel this path 
which is the only route leading to true peace. 
Forgive our daily acts of injustice 
which condemn many, many persons to death 
     by hunger, exclusion and war, 
and lead us to the abyss of endless violence. 

God, incarnate in history, 
forgive us because we imprison you in our dogmas, 
limiting you to our religious institutions 
and crucifying you alongside the vulnerable of our time. 

O God, strengthen us in our daily work for a world more just, 
accepting differences, built on diversity. 
Renew our commitment to peace with justice, 
a commitment which denounces the arrogance 
     of those who believe that they are powerful 
     and own the lives of all the rest. 
Give us a vision to banish violence in all its forms. 
Establish as the foundation of our lives, 
and the lives of our people, 
respect, equality, truth and justice.

(prayer text for 2007)

O God, Lord of the wind and the sea,
of the mountains and the valleys,
of the world and of the church:
in the midst of fear and insecurity
give us trust and hope in you. 

We live in a world
  where the gales of power
    blow strong enough to shake life itself,
      where from the arrogant and the interests of the powerful
        roll the waves of injustice and violence. 

We pray for those suffering
  because of their poverty, their ignorance,
    their limitations,
      because of their colour or status, social or sexual.
We think of your church sailing on a sea
where the waves of racism, militarism, sexism
and economic marginalization hurt human life. 

Take care of your church and put in it
  a sincere love for those who suffer,
  a clear vision of your will,
  healing, pastoral words for the needy,
  and a valiant, prophetic proclamation
  against those who create violence and pain. 

O God, rebuke the uncontrolled wind of terrorism and war.
Turn it towards peace and human development
so that in place of lies, truth is strengthened,
in place of weapons, there are schools for all children,
in place of luxury, the world adorns itself
  with bread for the hungry
and life blossoms everywhere. 

O God, Lord of the wind and the sea,
may your strong mercy calm the whole earth.
In the name of Jesus Christ.

© Bishop Aldo M. Etchegoyen, Evangelical, Methodist Church of Argentina.

A letter from Argentina

I've been away from my computer this week, so I've been unable to do much research about Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay; I'll try to catch up tonight, but I'll warn you, it will be quantity over quality.

I did e-mail the bishops' conferences of all three churches, and I finally got a reply!  I asked them what we should pray for, and they gave me a laundry list.  It's an interesting challenge for me - I'd like to be able to pick and choose what I pray for, but at the same time, one of the points here is to actually love the people of another country to find out who they are.  So here is what they asked for:

Mr. Jeff Johnson:

We have received your kind e-mail.

For Mons . Enrique Eguía Seguí´s indication, I say to you that currently the Catholic Church in Argentina

is praying for the following intentions:

- The decrease of poverty.

- The rejection of the project of gay marrige act which is now at the Congress.

- The rejection of any project of abortion act.

- The social peace.

- The unity of families.

- The fruitfulness of the labour of goverment authorities.

- To encourage a missionary style especially from the parish.

- To prioritize the pastoral missionary one from the catechizing of Christian initiation.

- To promote the missionary commitment towards a just society and responsible initiation christens.

- To recover the respect to the family and to the life in all his forms.

- To advance in the reconciliation between different social sectors and in the capacity of dialog.

- To encourage the formation of responsible citizens who construct a nation.

- To strengthen the republican institutions, the State and the organizations of the society.

- To improve the political system and the quality of the democracy.

- To guarantee the education and the work as keys of the integral development.

- To promote the federalism.

- To deepen the integration of the region.

We look forward to the success of your project.

Sincerely, 

Valeria Retondo

Secretaría Privada CEA

Brazil to an outsider

This is a process.  This week, I started by loading up on information from various sources, reading them over, and trying to take them all in.  I've also tried to e-mail a couple people in the Brazilian Catholic council of bishops, but they haven't responded (the fact that I don't write in Portugese only complicates things, I'm sure).  If I get a response about what to pray for, I'll post it.  In the meantime:

Brazil sounds like an amazing country with a great need for prayer.  On the one hand, it has a strong Christian tradition - of the 200 million or so Brazilians, 90% are Christian (including 73.6% Catholic; if I read it right, Brazil has more Catholics than any other country).  On the other hand, there are still many tribes of indigienous people in the Amazon who have never heard the gospel.  So we can pray for the spiritual awakening of those in the cities, who like America suffer from the softening of the Spirit that comes when membership in a religion is the cultural norm and acknowledging membership in the church doesn't necessarily translate into a relationship with God.  We can also pray for the success of missionaries being trained to take the gospel into the Amazon jungle.

I didn't know that Brazil is the 5th largest country in the world, both in size and in population.  It boasts one of the most promising economies in the developing world, although there are many poor including children who live and work on the streets or in shantytowns.  They also are challenged by issues that Floridians can relate to - one of their strengths is the beauty of their land, but development threatens to destroy that beauty, both by deforesting the Amazon and extinguishing unique animal species and by directly harming human life through land and water pollution and severe oil spills.  So praying for the leaders of the country in their stewardship of God's creation and care for each other also seems called for. 

Brazilian culture seems in some ways like American culture amplified.  Their Carnival sounds a lot like Mardi Gras, but bigger.  The cultural emphasis on superficial beauty is strong, as is the cocaine trade.  And they love their sports!  So we can pray that like Americans, Brazilians will recognize the superficiality of these things and the reach for the sure promise of lasting happiness that comes with focusing on what is truly important.

More on Brazil

Here's a story from FIDES on missionary efforts in the Amazon:

FIDES, a Catholic news agency devoted to missionary efforts, is a great resource in learning about the Church in different countries.  The Society for the Propagation of the Faith put me onto it.

Praying for Brazil: resources

Here's a link to the prayer intentions the WCC raises.

Here's a link to the CIA World Factbook page on Brazil

Here's a link to Wikipedia's entry on Roman Catholicism in Brazil

Here's a link to the CNBB - the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (unfortunately, I don't know any Portugese).

Global Catholic Church Project

It started in O'Hare Airport.  I was coming back from a business trip, and as always, I miscalculated how much reading material I would need for the flight.  Usually, I bring way too much.  This time, not enough.  So I walked through the bookstore and grabbed what looked like an interesting book in the Religion section, David Platt's Radical. 

It is a very good book that I recommend.  I am in the midst of studying Forgotten God by Francis Chan with a Facebook group, and Radical is very similar in outlook but with different emphases.  One of them is on our calling and responsibility as Christians to serve and witness to the entire world.  He has tons of stories about traveling on foreign missions and make a compelling case that we all have a role to play in spreading the gospel globally. 

Not to give the book away, but one of his challenges to readers is to pray, over the course of the year, for the people of every country in the world.  He offers a great resource, Operation World, which is devoted to this and includes a daily country (or region of a country) with scads of information about it.

I don't consider myself an evangelical.  I won't go into why, but my evangelical friends will agree with my self-assessment.  And I am Catholic.  So looking at the Operation World site left me wanting something different.  So I went searching.

I found the World Council of Churches, a mainline Protestant organization, has a rotating weekly calendar of countries to pray for (which seemed more manageable than the daily thing), and some good information, and like Operation World has prayer requests. 

But what I wanted to know is, not what people in the US think we should pray for, but what the people who are members of the universal Church in that country want us to pray for.  And because one of the reasons I am Catholic is the knowledge that there are brothers and sisters in every country on the planet celebrating the same faith, I wanted to find out what Catholics in those countries arethankful for and what they are struggling with. 

This week, the WCC countries are Angola and Mozambique.  Know what I know about Angola? '92 Dream Team destroyed them in Barcelona.  Mozambique?  Nada.  I have already benefited more in a couple days of praying for these two countries than I have in a lifetime of praying for vague concepts like global missions or the church universal.  Throughout my day, I keep being struck by questions: I wonder what time it is in those countries?  I wonder what people are doing there?  What are the problems that have them both ranked so terribly high in mortality rates, and what can we do to change that?  What can be done to address the incredible poverty there?  What are their church services like?  What is the mood of the faithful, the priests, religious groups that are serving there?

To underscore that the Spirit is really in this, I got an e-mail this week from a friend who is, I guess, a social media pastor.  He was e-mailing a big list saying he would miss a prayer meeting due to travel and did anyone have a request for the group.  And one person hit "reply all".  There's always one.  This one, though, is a missionary in Myanmar who gave a brief assessment of the work there and the trouble they are encountering and asking for prayers.  I know less about Myanmar than Mozambique.  My daughter knows more than me, I'm pretty sure, about Myanmar, and she is in first grade.  But this underscored for me that this global vision was real, Spirit-led, and immediate in need.
So I'm hoping to find some help in a project.  I'd like to build a resource on each country that coincides with the WCC schedule, that has that kind of information.  Some of it is readily available (ironically, I guess, the CIA has great info on its website about each country that these other sites pull from).  Some, I think, we'd have to ask people who serve in that country.  It seems to me the easiest way to do this is set up a website called a wiki (as in wikipedia) in which collaborators can post pages and information as they find it.

I have looked on the USCCB site, the Vatican site, and several others that popped up in Google searches, and it does not exist.  I e-mailed the folks at the USCCB who are responsible for the national collection for supporting the global church, and they said such a project, chronicalling everything the Church does in every country, was way too big.  But if there are a few people willing to give a little time over an extended period working together to learn a little more about what life is like in Brazil (next week's country), and what the Church is thankful for and needs there, it seems to me it isn't an impossible task.  What do you think?

God in the night

I always thought that the parallel of God as the sun made sense.  Now I'm not so sure.
Looking up at the night sky and marveling at the beauty of the stars on the canvas of black, it was hard not to see the hand of the Creator.  Then as the stars faded with the rising of the sun, I realized that maybe God is closer to us in the night than in the day.

The sun works better as a metaphor for the distractions of the world.  It is less significant than the whole universe, but it burns so bright that it makes it impossible to see the broader canvas of stars for its brightness.  And it empowers us to do - much of what we do with our time, all the busyness and business that captures our thoughts - requires light and energy.  We even talk about harnessing the power of the sun for more energy to do our work.  And when there is no light, if we move too boldly, we stub our toes.

In the dark, by yourself, there's a need to do less and be more.  To look hard for the beauty in the night.  To spend time in contemplation.  And with less distraction, maybe it's easier to come closer to God.

Christianity, pop culture, and Armando Galarraga's imperfect game

Here's what Armando Galarraga's imperfect game means, and what it doesn't.  Sports is a part of pop culture, much like politics and entertainment.  None of pop culture is ultimately important; whatever importance these things have is ascribed to it by us.  At the end of days, and likely much sooner, the details of what happens in these realms will not matter.

That said, pop culture is a spotlight, shining public attention on whatever is in its path.  For the moment that something is in that spotlight, what happens gets a lot of attention, and it says a great deal not only about the subjects who are in the spotlight but about the people who pay attention.

Most of what the pop culture spotlight exposes is not pretty.  I think you could argue that whether the spotlight is positive or negative, it is revealing of character.  Celebrities who seek the attention because they are egocentric.  Criminals being exposed for their misdeeds.  When someone ends up in the spotlight and behaves with grace, humility, and honesty, when they reveal good character, when they act like what we would hope we would act like, it is a surprise.  And that is what happened in the Galarraga incident: the umpire was honest and remorseful about his mistake, and the pitcher was gracious and comforting in response.

There is a temptation for Christians to seize these rare signs of good character and say "That's true Christianity!  That's what our faith is all about!" It is perhaps a reflection of how rare these signs are, and how eager Christians are to help others see how we aspire to live, that this happens.  But it's not necessarily true, and it's not at all fair.

I don't know Galarraga or Joyce.  I don't know why they acted the way they did.  It could be that their character arises from Christian faith, but it might be that they acted that way because they learned from parents or other role models that this is what good behavior is.  It might be that their integrity and their values stem from another faith, or from no faith at all.  And if Christians want to be taken seriously by non-believers, we need to acknowledge that up front.

What Christians can do, and should do, is use these opportunities to talk about why we think these men did God would have wanted them to do.  And maybe Galarraga or Joyce themselves have said or will say such things, I don't know.

Maybe Galrarraga will say "It's easy to be forgiving of Joyce's mistake, not just because I know we're all human and make mistakes, but because I know how important God's forgiveness of my sins is to me and want to do what I can to show others that same sort of grace."  Or "This perfect game would have meant a lot to me, but it's not as important as the fact that God loves me. I work hard as a pitcher because God gave me the gift of throwing a ball fast for some reason, but God gave all of us the ability and the charge to put the needs of others before our own.  And Jim Joyce needs to know I forgive him more than I need to prove I threw a perfect game."

Now that would be something Christians could point to and say, "This is what we're about."

What the USCCB's FB Fan page might say about the church and social media

This is a sorry excuse for a blog, but to the extent that there are themes I find a need to post on, they are the role of faith in American politics (which I've studied a little) and the future of social media and the church (which I'm just getting interested in). This week, I've seen a confluence of all three on the USCCB fan page.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops runs a decent online presence - a Facebook page that works as another media relations outlet, a Twitter feed, probably some other stuff. A few weeks ago they posted a note about which cities had the most FB fans, which was fun, sparked me to try to get friends to sign up, and showed they have an interest in engaging their fans.

And then, health care reform popped up. The Conference issued a statement earlier this week opposing federal health reform, and a funny thing happened - FB fans treated it like they would any other post. They argued, sometimes in great detail, sometimes not. They asked questions. They reacted.

I don't know what transpired within the USCCB media shop, or how many bishops actually look at the page, but at least the people who run the fan page took notice. They responded. They refereed a little. A couple times, they got swept up in the conversation.

What fascinates me about this is not the issue of health care and the Church's position per se. (No, really, I mean that!) It's what this sort of interaction might mean in the future. To a much greater degree than ever before, the Church is being forced into a more interactive mode of communication with its members, which is an incredible challenge. There are less than 15,000 fans on the FB site, compared to, what, 70 million total members, but the few fans who participated in comments on the USCCB's wall showed a wide diversity of opinion, a wide range of knowledge about the issue, and a fair bit of expressed loyalty to the church and its leaders. The fact that the Catholic Health Association and scores of female religious orders took a different position on the issue sparked even more controversy.

It seems to me that this is the beginning of a new phase in the Church that it will embrace, fight, or both. The Church has been labeled often over the years as hierarchical, and I don't think I need to dwell on that point. The web, and particularly social media, are flat. A hierarchical Church can issue a statement with only limited (and relatively slow) response from dissenters among its members. A flat church will find the need and the opportunity to interact with supporters, opponents, and undecideds or mixed among its members in a much more significant way - they will get questions directly, and the opportunity to "show their work" by walking through the thinking, the Scripture, the tradition behind the rationale for a position.

Such interaction is time and thought-intensive. It is challenging, not only in the sense of being hard but also in the sense that it will feel like the authority of the Church is being challenged. The Church may choose to ignore this change, may approach respondents with a "take it or leave it" approach. It shouldn't. If the Church's positions are worth accepting, they are worth explaining in as much detail as the faithful need. Maybe more controversially, the Church may need to recognize that sometimes the people posting comments opposed to the official Church position might have some valid points that can improve the Church's vision.

Random social media stats and stuff

Haven't posted in a while, but there have been several interesting stats about social media usage that I've posted on my Facebook profile, but that's written in water, so I figured I'd stash them here. Most of them showed up first on Mashable, which runs a great clearinghouse on this sort of thing, even if they are WAY too hyper about their Facebook posting.

Here's a great video that incorporates a ton of different stats on the growth of the internet and especially social media.

Here's a nice infographic on the state of Twitter.

Here's a study on the "obsession" of social media users.

Here's a nice study showing that people use different social media platforms for different things.

Finally, there's a nice piece from Salon.com about a cool story involving Conan O'Brien, a random Twitter user, and a lot of good.

Paying Taxes, Citizenship, and issues of faith

Purpose Driven Connection's Scot McKnight has an interesting piece on paying taxes as a form of worship.

He cites a lot of the same passages I've used here, so as you might guess, I generally agree. I might argue that he goes too far by calling it worship, though.

Opposite ends of the spectrum

The Catholic News Service does a pretty good job with it's Facebook page in raising the issue of how the Church should respond to the Pope's call for priests to use social media. Here's a blog they've cited a couple times in which a priest who has been out in front of the curve shares what he's learned.

It's a good start, and it's good to see Catholic laity like Matthew Warner struggling with how to do more by studying the data (he uses Erik Qualman's excellent Socialnomics video here.

Certainly on the Protestant side, there are some pretty big players doing well by social media. I stopped typing that sentence so I could share Purpose Driven's daily devotional on my FB profile.

But these are churches that existed pre-social media looking to adopt new technology. I think the other end of the spectrum isn't theological or doctrinal but organizational: new churches that are starting now are building to greater or lesser extents around social media as a foundational building block. My friend Andy Fernandez's I Am Ministries may be a good example of that. He's in the process of building a "church without walls" with a house church structure that dates back to the earliest collections of believers, but he also has an active and engaging website, a Twitter feed and a Facebook feed to engage his members through their days.

More reflections on social media and faith

In my last post, I tried to hash out a quick argument for WHY the Church should engage social media in its mission, but I didn't really say much about HOW. Let me take as a way of categorizing these the purposes in Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life. Keep in mind that fundamentally, I see the value of the church engaging in social media as a means of providing believers with ways to surround themselves with messages that support them in their faith walk while exposing non-believers to the Christian message. My sense is that to date some church leaders have been enterprising in using social media, but mostly in non-social manner - as one-way broadcast media instead of as hosts of conversations. The latter requires some significant changes - not only do leaders need to be able to relinquish control of the agenda and engage others in dialogue, but believers who currently participate as passive receivers of messages need to develop their own voices.

Worship:
I don't believe you can conduct sacraments via social media, but couldn't we do more to prepare for them? Currently there are several outlets that post the readings for daily and Sunday mass, and that's certainly a start. Many churches post audio and video podcasts of worship services after the fact. But couldn't an enterprising church post video/audio of the songs to be sung at upcoming Sunday worship so parishioners can get familiar with them first? Couldn't there be chat sessions and other conversations using Twitter, Facebook, etc. on the themes of the readings?

Community:
This is the most natural function of social media, as parishioners can and should develop "friend lists" and groups to deepen the bonds of community established face-to-face and continue their church relationships throughout the week...just like they do with other friends. While I have seen several ministries use Facebook and Twitter to ask for prayer requests, I'm never quite sure who's doing the actual praying for those requests. It seems more in keeping with the local nature of church to engage smaller scale prayer boards with groups of participants who agree not only to submit requests but to pray for the intentions raised by others. As impressive as a Facebook thread with 750+ comments on it may be, it doesn't seem realistic to think that those 750 people are taking time to pray for the intentions of the other 749.

Discipleship:
"Distance learning" it used to be called. Education suing social media tools is not that new, but traditional educational institutions have been slow to embrace the possibilities this format brings. Unlike one-way educational platforms (including online "self-taught" classes), using social media engages the participants in teaching each other content. One attempt I've tried in this arena is a Facebook study group - between 25-75 people have registered and between 6-30 have very actively participated in studies on books (One Month to Live, Purpose Driven Life) and Bible studies. This format has the added benefit of building a sense of community while fostering spiritual growth.

Service:
Coordinating service projects and other service-related ministry, as well as promoting their work, seems to be something the faith community is adapting social media for already.

Witness:
One of the benefits of social media is that participants who are believers have a very easy time witnessing. It can be awkward to raise a faith conversation with a non-believer you know (or one you don't). Posting status updates that reflect your faith or tweeting about what you're doing at church are far less intimidating. There's also a dimension of witnessing via social media that I find charming: you never know who's going to respond. I'm by no means the best at this, but I continue to be surprised to draw a reaction from someone I didn't even consider when I posted my update.

Initiating a theology of social media

Toward a pastoral theology of social media

The Church has seen that technology is itself morally ambivalent – it has the potential to be used for good and for evil. Although sometimes slow to adopt technology for its own mission, the Church does in time find ways to use new technology to promote the gospel.

In his recent speech, Pope Benedict XVI underscores that social media are important tools for priests in preaching the Gospel, and this is certainly true. But I would argue that social media provide new opportunities for the Church to be the Church and for Christians to live out their faith. Five elements of our mission are to worship, to grow in holiness, to support each other in community, to serve others, and to witness to the Gospel.* Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs and other social media can all be used to each of these ends. Perhaps more importantly, the way these media are being used in the secular world offer some ideas about how they can be used by the faithful, and the defining characteristics of their use have theological implications.

One gets the sense that the Pope may have seized on the use of social media for spreading the Gospel simply because a) these media are very popular b) you can use them to articulate the Gospel and c) given a) and b), why wouldn’t you? But if we stop and reflect on what it is that makes social media unique (and popular), we can recognize that there are theological claims beneath their use that should shape how, why, and to what degree we use them. I’ll try to articulate four elements here that are worth reflecting on as a way of starting a conversation.

1) Relational. Social media are, by definition, social. They exist as systems that connect people to each other. The content and purpose of those connections varies per platform and in most cases is highly malleable. As Christians, this should be comfortable. We believe in a Trinitarian God, that is, a God that is ultimately relational. We believe we are called to follow in that relational aspect of God by developing relationships with fellow believers. While relationships can be positive or destructive in and of themselves, pretty clearly the potential of social media to move people from a world in which leisure time is defined in terms of passive consumption of entertainment to active relationship-building is promising.

2) User-generated. Social media platforms may be seen as the great democratizers of communication. In every previous media framework, producers of content have been largely separate from consumers, based primarily by the cost or exclusiveness of the means of production and distribution. So if you want to print a newspaper, you have to have access to a big printing press and a means of distributing the papers. If you want to make a movie, you need to not only have access to all the expensive filmmaking tools but also access to the network of cinemas that might show your movie. If you want to broadcast TV or radio, you need expensive equipment and an FCC license.

But with social media, none of that is true. Millions of people watched “coverage” of the earthquake in Haiti that came not from the professional news outlets through televisions and newspapers but from cell-phone cameras to Twitter feeds and Facebook posts. And if this is true for news, it is infinitely more true for opinion and entertainment. From a theological perspective, this networked model fits the recent emphasis on the apostolate of the laity – the calling of all believers to active ministry. From an ecclesiological perspective, it’s not hard to see that this new dynamic – in which power comes through a flat, ever-changing network of connections rather than an established hierarchy – is likely to be very difficult for the Church to embrace. And the church will be right in its concern that heresy and apostasy can be spread as easily as truth through this framework, not to mention that it risks glorifying the individual even more than Western culture already does. But the possibility of truly empowering the laity to live out its communal and individual calling through these technologies should be deeply explored.

3) Ubiquitous. This is technically not the fault or credit of social media themselves, but of the fact that handheld wireless devices (iPhones and iPods, Blackberries, smart phones, etc.) can access many of these media. Many Americans are always connected to these media via handheld devices. And “always” is not an overstatement. I am not the only person I know who sends and receives messages while out walking the dog. Others go even farther. More and more, the Church may find itself in a place to preach prophetically about the need for true Sabbaths, for time disconnected to the world at large so as to better connect with God. At the same time, if we as Christians are to be always rejoicing (Phil. 4:4), and pray without ceasing (I Thess. 5:17), aren’t we compelled to use technologies that are always on and used without ceasing to find ways to rejoice and pray?

4) Culture-creating. Over the last 20 years, the diversification of viewpoints enabled by cable television and radio have allowed Americans to choose more and more to surround themselves with messages that reinforce their worldview. (The converse is also true: we can better avoid messages that challenge our worldview.) The internet, and particularly social media (especially blogs), have extended that trend further. I find this personally troubling from a political and cultural perspective, as we find it easier to demonize groups whose beliefs or characteristics we only experience through the lens of commentators already predisposed against them. But taking a step back, this seems to be an extension of #2, above, with both positive and negative theological implications.

On the one hand, this affirms some themes in both testaments, themes that talk about God’s people as co-creators and as people set apart. In the past, those who reacted to the “otherness” of the Christian calling by rejecting the worst of the world frequently retreated entirely into monastic life. Now, we can remain in many ways engaged in the world as a prophetic voice while to some extent countering the cacophonous messages of a fallen world with a constant stream of messages that praise and worship God while calling us to faithfulness and discipleship.

So what does this mean for how the Church uses social media? I can’t expect to answer that question in any sense of comprehensiveness, but here are a few things I would say might be starting points:

• Use the relational nature of social media to keep believers connected throughout the week and throughout the day. Most Christians celebrate faith only on Sundays. Those who go beyond that can engage in activities only around their work schedule and the schedule of their parish. Social media allow online faith-sharing groups, truly interactive and real-time prayer groups, an endless array of discipleship opportunities, and of course more service, witness and worship moments.
• Continue to preach the need for a true Sabbath. Turning off the Blackberry is more countercultural than many people realize, and more important.
• Understand that for the Church to embrace social media means an entirely new level of democratization of ministry. Ultimately, effective social media ministers won’t be evaluated by their certification or their ordination but by their ability to communicate within the parameters of a given platform and their willingness to share themselves with those who connect with them in authentic ways.

This is only the start of an important conversation. I hope you’ll join in.


* While these five elements are easily recognizable as the five purposes articulated by Pastor Rick Warren in The Purpose Driven Life, I have encountered the same five within Catholic education on the roles of the Church.