Follow this Prayer Journey through one of Rich Melheim’s prayers from the Head to Heart Confirmation Curriculum by Faith Inkubators.
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This Prayer Journey is best experienced by closing your eyes and focusing on the prayers and scriptures, but there are visual elements to keep your eyes entertained if you’d rather keep them open.
The Book Net Smart: How to Thrive Online by Howard Rheingold is one that has a lot of good information for anyone at any point of entry into the internet. It could be for older generations who remember the times before the world wide web or for those “kids” who have never been without a computer in the home.
Some of the things that I found to be helpful and interesting were the chapters on “Attention and Crap Detection.” These seemed to be things that are readily accessible to me and what I already do online. One thing I liked to learn about was how to pay attention to attention. It is true that I often hear about the studies and people who have determined that multitasking is bad for our brains and that the internet is robbing us off our attention spans. I have even found this to be true since having a baby…I can not remember as much and my brain tends to wander a lot more than it ever did before. The idea of paying attention to attention makes sense. Why? Take for example this blog I am writing. It can take me 15 minutes or an hour to accomplish depending on where my attention is at. Sometimes, as many of you have experienced you log onto the computer and three hours later you realize that you have gotten nothing done. Rheingold recommends two things: noticing when your mind is wandering and when you are focused and writing a list that you keep close to your computer of what you need to do online. The second one I am going to try using because I have found that as I proceed in my work and making social networking a priority, I need to have a to do list so that I can keep track of what i am doing.
The second thing was the “Crap Detection.” This chapter has some very good things to find reputable sources. I remember learning about what a reputable source was in middle school but even from then to know it has changed. It is not just enough to look for things on a web site but you have to triangulate it between three to four other things and double check. I believe this has added to the aspect that there is a profound culture shift that says we are used to this aspect we take everything we read with a grain of salt because most of the time you can find contradicting information. If we can not fully experience what we are looking at we do not trust it.
The last thing I found interesting was the section on Collaboration. Though this was a small section, I went to YouTube and found a TED talk of Rheingold speaking about collaboration. This was fascinating to me because it does seem like we are going to an open source way of doing things, not out of Altruism but because people can gain something from collaborating with others and having an open source policy. It will be interesting to see what this does to the economy.
I wonder what collaboration looks like within the church. I think we are slowly moving in that direction, for example in Omaha, NE there is the Tri-Faith Initiative that is putting the three faiths of the Abrahamic tradition on the same campus. they have found that there is something to this open collaboration between one another. It will be interesting to see how that changes and grows.
The following is a video from youtube that most of us have probably watched at some point or another but it raises major questions that I feel the church needs to be addressing.
Throughout the YouTube, video it shows information tidbits that are fascinating. One of which that I found interesting was that people now will have 13 -14 jobs before they are the age of 40. This raises the question of continuity with our parishioners and with the leaders of the church. Here are the few questions I have. One is if we are currently training pastors in the traditional way that has been done but they will have many upon many jobs before they are 38, is there any guarantee that they won’t continue that pattern to a certain degree as they continue in their life journey? Another question is what about our parishioners? There is still a thought out there that people come back to church when they decide to have kids, yet with all of this change people on average seem to be taking longer to decide to have kids in our culture and there has been at least in my experience a push for those people who do not want kids to not have them. Not to mention that they have everything changing with all of these jobs. Shouldn’t the church should start to discuss ourselves as a place of stability for some and how we have to help people to see the movement of the Holy Spirit and the ability of the church to meet people where they are as God calls us to do? I truly wonder if we are training leaders in the church in seminaries that will not be in the ministry for long because of the trends in jobs and how many we now on average have. I would be interested to hear others thoughts and what the video said to them.
What is an online profile? I have learned a number of things after having read Click 2 Save The digital Ministry Bible by Elizabeth Drescher and Keith Anderson. One is that I am a novice in all of the areas of social networking. Two, the reason I am a novice in all of the areas is because I have not been really intentional about using these medias. Last I believe that after reading this book that you can be too involved in technology and not involved enough.
Using technology for ministry is an area that I have been resistant to embrace and before you think that I am being unrealistic to the aspects of technology in our culture, I want to say I have been involved with social media since my freshman year of college and have had a cell phone since I was 14 (though most kids have it before this now 🙂 I am used to the technology but I didn’t want to use it because there are many ways in which what you put on the screen is in the universe FOREVER. I may not even choose to have a picture of myself on the internet anymore. My sister could take a picture put it up on the internet and there is nothing I can do about it. It makes me second guess what I do everyday. Celebrities are an indication that nothing is out of the public eye if someone doesn’t want it to be. Despite all this, technology is something that can be used for good and not evil. The fact is there are so many ways now to connect with people and we/I have an obligation to connect at least on some level with all of it.
Being intentional about social media is difficult. One because they can suck your time because you can easily spend two hours seeing what everyone is up to and not getting what you need to done. So to do this you need to be able to determine and regulate the time that you spend on things. This is a practice and it takes time.
Lastly there is such a thing as too much technology just as there can be not enough. It seems to me there are a number of sites out there that give people a platform to rant on and on about things, which just puts more and more negative aspects out in to the world. I have too many ways to communicate with the youth and parents in my congregation. So many that I finally had to limit it and say this is the way I am going to communicate with you. If this doesn’t work here are the places you can find the information. Yet there is also the opposite of this. We need to be using technology and figuring out new and exciting ways to use it in the world today.
This brings me to the aspect of this book. It is a good read and a great way to determine where you are in the sphere of social media. The greatest lesson I learned from both this book and Net Smart: How to Thrive Online by Howard Rheingold is that you have to be cognizant of what is going on. You really do need to determinehow much time you are going to spend online and what you are going to pay attention to.
Last weekend I had the privilege of going to the Nebraska Synod Assembly. It was a great experience and I was able to learn a lot from Diane Butler Bass and Nadia Bolz-Weber. During this same time I was finishing the book Click 2 Save. Throughout the week the word that continued to go through my head was Authentic/Authenticity. So what does it mean to be Authentic? This brought up questions regarding technology and how many people feel if they just use technology then they will have more people come or younger people come. This is not necessarily the case and I think that is something that needs to be explored. Throughout the weekend the speakers spoke to cultural shifts and what young adults are really looking for. I found as a 27 year old that what they where stating was really resonating with me.
Nadia stated that when 1/3 of the space of a normal church is designated for one person to stand (the preacher) you lose most of the young adults that walk into your congregation because you have separated them out and made it somewhat of a show, whether it is traditional or contemporary dosn’t really matter. I have found in my own experience that I prefer to be a worship assistant in services partly because I want to learn about word and sacrament but also because I feel more apart of what is going on. I am experiencing the worship in a different way and a more interactive way than just sitting in a pew.
Nadia Bolz-Weber is the pastor at House for all Sinners and Saints. This church has been recognized as a young emerging mission in Denver Colorado. The interesting thing I found with this church was that there service doesnt have screens, or a praise band or the pastor doing all parts of the service. They are able to walk into the service on a Sunday morning and say that they want to read the gospel they can. Or if they want to do the prayers they can. They do not mail anything out, it is all done through the internet and yet that is not necessarily a part of their worship. This resonates with me but I also that it is not possible in many contexts.
What I do think we need to take away from this is for our technology, worship services and programming, naming and saying aloud why we do things is important. It is not just enough for the pastor to notice why something is done but it is also important for it to be shared with the community. Take for example: If you decided as a church that you want to keep the newsletter going out by mail and the reason for that is because the older generation wont get it any other way and they are the only ones who read it, this is a reason to keep it in paper format. But you not only have to name that but share it with the whole community. Another example: if the reason you have flowers on the alter is because there is a woman by the name of Mildred who has been a volunteer for 50 years wants them on the altar that is great! Just state that that is the reason they are on the altar. Being intentional is important and makes it so that the authenticity comes out. I have found that if I understand why they do the things they are doing whether it is because the pastor likes it that way or because one person would be to upset to change it, I feel better and more involved with what is going on.
It is more authentic when the community you are in understands why things are done. The fact is it doesn’t matter what you are doing, if you are not naming it and saying it aloud then you are not being open about what and why it is going on.
Below is a video lecture given by Douglas Thomas taken from YouTube.
Since I had all of those questions from my last post I thought that I would look up other sources in regards to this teaching and learning thing. The above is what I found and it got me thinking. As Thomas goes through his lecture, he is talking about learning and what that currently looks like in our culture, for our teachers and students. Though I couldn’t help but hear it as a part of the church.
Take confirmation for an example. Most churches do a program that sorta follows the following outline. They have a leader (normally the pastor) who gives a lecture or sermon then they divide up into small groups where they talk about the content for the evening. And this is good, there are kids that buy into it and relationships grow between group leader and student. Yet to some degree it is still a top down approach. And even if you have small groups going and the kids are invested, some are faced with people saying “well when I was growing up…I had to memorize the whole catechism, I had a test in front of the whole council…” These are some of the challenges we are facing in the education in our church.
The church has followed the school system almost to a T, going by the same schedule and so on. Yet I would argue that this is a major problem for our education for two reasons.
One: If we follow what the school is doing then we are not cultivating passion and imagination in the youth that are coming through our doors. They see this as another place they have to be and it has no interest to them what so ever.
Two: We also fall in to the context vs. content problem that Douglas Thomas speaks about. We as the church are a context (one source of the gospel). I think because of these two issues we have to start looking at how we are “teaching” in the church. If we are facing a different culture and dynamic where kids are able to see all sides of an issue through online sources, we need to go back to being the church in times of constant change. It will no longer be okay to say we don’t like change because the youth that are growing up are living in a constant flux of change. That is where they thrive because it challenges them and helps them to learn all that they want to know about.
What might it look like if we were igniting the passions and imagination with the story of the gospel? What if we were letting them ask the questions and learn together and we gave up on our “expertise” of the way things should be? I think it could be quite interesting. What do you think?
There are a great number of things that are present when I think about Engaging Technology. One is that technology can be loud, obnoxious and intrusive. It can be confusing and stifling but it also can be amazing, new and growing. It gives us new ways in which to look at things. It gives us avenues to see Grace and God in new and different ways. One of the best ways in which I truly enjoy technology is the aspect of being able to see and experience things over and over again. This is something that I think is absolutely amazing and has always been a part of technology as it has evolved. Take for example videos of events; you do not have to be at the event to hear and experience a speaker. This morning I was listening to Nadia Bolz-Weber speaking at The ELCA Youth Gathering. While I didn’t get to go to the gathering, it is great to be able to hear the message.
After this last week of reading Engaging Technology in Theological Education: All that we cant leave behind by Mary E. Hess, I got to thinking about what it means to engage technology. As a Distributed Learning student at Luther Seminary, I am often thinking and dealing with the challenges of not being in a classroom and doing most of my education in an online format. This raises many questions for myself and others. Some of those questions include: Am I creating the relationships that I am going to need with my peers for the future as a pastor? Am I experiencing the aspect of becoming the other and being taken out of a context I understand to experience new contexts and learning from them? Am I building relationships with my professors through the digital technology with which I am learning? I really do not have an answer to these questions but the following are a few thoughts I have.
One is that I have learned a different way to be embodied. It is a different way to connect and socialize with people who are not in my near area. One way that I am excited to participate in this is through social media. Even things like Google Hangout where I am able to do a bible study with my fellow cohort students on the weekly passages in the liturgy. We have created a way to do a text study and catch up where we do not have to be in the same room let alone the same state.
A second is that I do not know where the technology will take us. I do not know how and the best way to use it in the class room or in theological education. I do know that there are many avenues with which it could be explored that are not because we are afraid of doing things differently. I was affraid of even of blogging. Sharing our ideas can be the best way in which to express and learn from one another.
Embodied Pedagogies: Engaging Racism in Theological Education and Digital Cultures is a chapter title in Mary E. Hess’ book Engaging Technology in Theological Education and for me a fascinating chapter!
Questions I had when finished reading this chapter: What does racism look like in our culture today? How do we as Christians called into this world to live Christ’s word answer racism in our culture and world? Is there more we should be doing to address not only our own Racist views but others?
As many of you have foundI do not have answers to these questions just more questions. The musings I have thought of are what in my personal life have I put out into the world that has added to the viewpoints or addressed them at their root? I am a White American raised in a culture that perpetuates selfishness. I have stated things that are racist without realizing what I was saying and I have acted ways in which I am not proud of. I am thankful for the grace of God that gives me an opportunity to look at myself and know that I am sinner and saint all at the same time and have the capacity to be both all of the time. So when I think about this question of what we should be doing, I would agree with many that it is a subject that we on a personal level have to work against everyday. We need to recognize that we are different and yet all children of God.
As I think on these questions it brings back the study I learned in Psychology classes at UNL. It was the Blue-eyed/Brown-eyed Exercise by Jane Elliot. She first preformed the exercise in a class room full of third graders. If you go to You- tube there is a three part story that shows the first experiment and how she has continued to use this exercise to teach about racism. I only linked the first video but it is beneficial to watch all three. It was interesting in this video that certain people who were white and in the brown eyed group had to leave because they did not want to see other people discriminated against. At times I believe this falls into the idea that if we do think about it, if we don’t act one way or another it is not really there. I can say that at times I would rather just pretend it is not there and since I am white, I am a part of a group that benefits from the racism that is out there. In essence, whereas others don’t get to just act like it is not there because they live with discrimination every day. I pretend that it isn’t pertinent to my daily life. This is something I have to work against. This is something we all have to work against. We all discriminate in one way or another. Not just regarding the color of our skin but accepting all of God’s people as God’s people.
The aspect that they do not deal with in this video or for us is it is often a question of who has the power. Those who have power believe there is no problem and those who do not have the power recognize that there is a difference in power. I wonder what this may look like in your every day life?
So I just finished Reading “A New Culture of Learning : Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change” by Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown. It was a very interesting book and there are a few things I would like to tackle. One is the idea of how we currently learn vs. ways in which we could learn differently. So typically in the world we have lived in and to a great extent the world we are still living in, learning in the main system of education is teacher to student. It is a one way relationship and it infers that there is an expert and a novice in the situation. A different way of thinking about learning in this book is through a collective. This concept makes perfect sense to me since to some degree it is how the DL program through Luther Seminary encourages us to learn. We have created cohorts that represent groups striving to learn to receive a degree. An example of how this is a collective is though we only sit in a class room four weeks out of the year, we continually converse in our online classes to learn and grow in the areas we study and also connect through social media. This social media is the area in which I feel we learn a different aspect of what it means to be a pastor and to deal with the issues and aspects that arise in the church. There have been questions on Facebook that span from how to preach on certain issues to doing a reading of a Psalm together for spiritual growth and reflection. This is the fascinating aspect of learning in this way. I have learned things that I never thought to ask because some one else thought to ask them and I am interested in the information.
So for me this comes down to questions. In the example given, we all have a question of how do we become leaders in the Church. It is through this question that we find out new ways to look at things. The trouble and challenge lies in not necessarily asking the question but dealing with where asking that question leads. When you ask a question, if you are truly invested in the answer you will learn a number of new things and as explained in the book there are a number of different ways in today’s culture that allow for you to connect and learn with others regarding that question. But most of the time that question will lead to more questions and as you continue to ask questions in all likelihood it will lead to action in one form or another (asking more questions or reacting to the answers.) And action typically leads to change.
This brings me to the second thing I want to address: living in a culture of change is not easy. I would agree that we need to live into that reality and we need to learn from it in various forms, yet we cannot do this at the loss of who we are and an aspect of having peace in the midst of this chaos. There are a number of questions I thought of as I read this book. Some have to deal with concepts and others are tangents regarding aspects of my own faith journey.
So many questions left unanswered, yet I am excited to explore what they may mean and to hear thoughts on what others think.
So as I was reading in the books assigned for this class that I am doing this blog for and I got to thinking about this idea of virtual church. First we need to have some background for why I was going down this road. The other day I participated in a lunch in where the presenter was presenting on Vibrant Faith at Home, where the main premise is that it is a website that gives families activities to do together. They wanted to give families a way to build and grow their faith in the home setting because it is something that needs to be happening. I would completely endorse this idea that there needs to be faith activities and rituals in the home. The question I am always wondering is if these families are doing all of these things at home where does the drive to go to worship come in? Now I know that many say that it doesn’t replace worship. yet I wonder if they say this because it would upset the status quo to say we have no need of church buildings any more. So that is where the thoughts started.
So the following are some ideas that I came up with for how we would no longer need a building to have church and yet still worship.
One way is to create worship in the virtual realm. This could mean that we would create a reality that would be just like what it is on a Sunday morning. People would sign into it from their couches at home. We already have technologies like Nintendo’s Wii and Microsoft’s X-BOX Connect, so they could still sit and stand and participate in church the way they always have on Sundays. So what would they be missing? They would not have the physical connection to the people in their church community (which I think is very important,) and they may have a hard time conversing with people who are sitting next to them, yet it is an idea that has me intrigued.
Another way: How many of you have been on Google Hangout, Skype or have worked in the corporate world where you are all on video screens? What if church became a setting that was interacted through video connect. There would be nine of you together who would sing songs, praise God, maybe go through a liturgy. You could pass the peace through the computer and after the worship part of the session you could discuss with one another what you just heard in the sermon.
With both scenarios, you may wonder then how do we do word and sacrament? This would be a kink that would have to be ironed out. I have thought that the sacraments could be consecrated and distributed ahead of time (in some way) and once a month a pastor could sign in with the group to go through these aspects with them.
This “virtual reality” is just interesting question to think about what the church would be like if we no longer had buildings. How might we commune differently? How would the role of the pastor change? What would the economic and stewardship responsibilities look like? I don’t think it is truly possible and I think that worship is something very necessary in the life of our faith, but I do question what it might look like in the future and how that might be different than anything we can currently imagine.
not-too-serious musings on culture and faith
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"Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." 2 Peter 3:18
"Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." 2 Peter 3:18
"Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." 2 Peter 3:18
"Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." 2 Peter 3:18
Reaching Up, and Growing 