Category Archives: social media

“The Medium Is The Message”… Again

Well, I am back on the grid after a series of trips and time in the wilderness – a literal wilderness not a spiritual one. I have a number of ideas outlined from this time of camping, work and reflection and hope to get them worked up as blog posts shortly. This includes some thoughts on Landon Whitsitt’s book Open Source Church, which played into what I want to talk about today.

In my brief time back on the grid a bit over a week ago the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) released the PDF version of the new Book of Order and initially charged for it. This was a break from tradition, both for the PC(USA) specifically as well as for Presbyterian and Reformed Churches in general. There was an initial uproar about it and a few days later the decision was reversed. As Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons tweeted (@gradyemp) “I will confess that we have not explained well the move to charge for the download.” With that the controversy quickly died down — We have returned to normal and all is right with the world again.

First, thanks to all who wrote me with the update that the download was once again free. I did catch it just before going off the grid again but did not have time to properly respond. Now I have had a chance to reflect on this a bit.

Some observations:

1. Once again “the medium is the message” and the medium now is Twitter. I have found it interesting how quickly a topic can get circulated via Twitter. As one article says, “Twitter Does Not Supplant Other Media, It Amplifies It.” This change was quickly amplified on Twitter and that is where the majority of the questions, answers, guesses and complaints were circulated, all in 140 characters or less.

2. As I indicated in my initial response the move to charge crossed a line that I am not aware that any other Presbyterian or Reformed denomination had previously crossed. (Please correct me if I missed one.) This does not mean that the PC(USA) should not have taken this route. The fact that they started down this road, even if they quickly turned back, is an indication that cost recovery needs to come from somewhere, especially if sales of hard copies are dropping as more people acquire the electronic version. If the Book of Order is to support itself then as sale of print copies decreases it only makes sense to charge for the electronic copies. I am pretty sure that was the rational behind the move. The other alternative is that initial publication costs be funded through per capita.

3. As the quote from the Stated Clerk above indicates the move was not done well. Again, the medium is the message. In addition to the change being made with no advance warning or interpretation the license terms of the new version were not explained. The copyright notice it carries is the same as the print version. Does that mean that I have to pay $10 for every computer I want to store it on? Can I store it in the cloud on something like Dropbox or Google Docs? Can all the ruling elders in a single household use the same download copy? Can a church, presbytery or synod office pay for one copy for the administrative and ecclesiastical personnel to share? Should it contain DRM measures to control the use? I could keep on going. While the questions are currently moot the issue is that the world has changed and that electronic use agreements can not be the same boiler plate we are used to in the paper copyright statements.

4. A couple brief quotes from Landon Whitsitt’s book are applicable here:

In so many areas of church organizational life, I believe that part of the problem we in the church have is that we unreflectively mimic what we see played out in the business world. “Business” is hard to avoid because it affects so much of our lives. [p. 148]

and

But when we employ modern business practices unreflectively, we begin to internalize the value systems from which those practices spring. [p. 149]

Now, those familiar with the book may comment that the book deals with orgaization and leadership while this controversy has to do with the sale of a document. True enough, but in making the decision to start charging for it did the organization reflect on why to charge or was it reduced to a “business decision.”

5. Speaking of Open Source Church, when I saw that The Book of Order download was no longer free my first reaction was that somehow violated open source principles. (And I was not the only one.) But it was only with a little reflection that I came to realize that the Book of Order does not even come close to the Open Source Definition. Again, Landon had a lot to say about this as well.

Let me suggest that this incident says a lot more about how we operate than whether we are willing to shell out a few bucks for our constitutional document. It says a lot about how we communicate with each other, or don’t communicate as the case may be. As I suggest, if we have to pay for the paper version why should we not have to pay for the digital version. (Maybe the paper version should have a premium price to pay for the materials as well as the labor of putting it together.) But it also suggests that more thought needs to be put into the differences between an electronic and paper version in regards to how they are used.

Let me also suggest that the church as a whole should be open to new models. How about an even more radical form of the Book of Order that I have not had time to pursue yet (so go ahead and run with this if you are interested). What if the Annotated Book of Order was online as a Wiki. Yes, it would require permission to upload all the text, but the idea is that the actual text and official annotations are displayed and locked, but us polity wonks generate additional commentary and discussion on the material. It would be possible to include preceding versions of the text for historical perspective and language from other branches for comparison. Think of it as sort of a Presbyterian polity midrash.

It is fascinating to view the interaction here of the top-down control structure and the new instantaneous bottom-up feedback made possible through social media. The church needs to adjust to the media in many different aspects, if not embrace it, as the technology advances.

“We Are Presbyterian” And “We Are PC(USA)”

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Yesterday was the anniversary of the birth of Ebenezer Erskine in 1680. He would become a respected figure in the Church of Scotland but later in his life he had a disagreement with the Kirk leading him to renounce jurisdiction and help lead a group that would secede and form the Associate Presbytery in 1733. This was the second division in the Church of Scotland, the Covenanters having divided from the established church a bit earlier.

So where am I going with this? The point is that even in the earliest days of American Presbyterianism to say that you were a Presbyterian did not necessarily mean the same thing to everyone. At a minimum, and this is simplifying things a bit, there was a tradition from the established church that would become the mainline, but also the Covenanters of the Reformed line and the Seceders of the Associate line. And I probably don’t need to tell you that over the last three centuries the complexity has increased and not decreased. (As a physicist I could point to increasing entropy, but that is not the purpose of today’s post.)

Yesterday also saw the launch of a new project led by the Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow, Moderator of the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). I was glad to see it launched because there has been some build-up to it around the Internet and I was interested to see what would come of it. One thing I was particularly interested in was the different names for the project and how that would affect the focus. For example, the Twitter account has the handle @WeArePCUSA but the long description is titled “We Are Presbyterian.” If you go to the launch site the title is also “We are Presbyterian” yet in the narrative below it refers to the videos coming from a “diverse group of folks from across the Presbyterian Church (USA).”

Maybe I am being too picky here. Am I just splitting hairs with this one? As I spend my free time blogging on global Presbyterianism I am well aware that the PC(USA) is just one local manifestation of this broad and diverse ecclesiastical form. Having watched these videos the We Are PC(USA) title is very applicable, but remember this is one small slice of a bigger fellowship.

OK, soapbox mode off…

In these 16 locally-produced videos submitted to Bruce and his crew we have a great representation of the PC(USA). If you have a spare hour I would suggest watching them. In the ones featuring individuals, each person comes across as speaking from the heart about their church and their vision and passion for it. The group ones are also interesting, particularly to listen to the individuals and where they agree and where they have different perspectives.

Bruce issued an open invitation to submit videos (with a video invite as well) and asked that they answer five questions:

Who are you and how are you connected to the PC(USA)?
What about the PC(USA) are you most thankful for?
What about the PC(USA) are you most disappointed in?
What do you believe that God is calling us to be in the next five years?
What is one ministry, organization or hope that we should pray for today?

It is interesting that about half of the things mentioned regarding the second question could apply to Presbyterianism in general and are not specific to the denomination: connectional system, joint governance on the boards of the church, confessional nature of our faith, priesthood of all believers. Likewise, the third question had some more general responses as well: could do better with racial ethnic diversity, need to do better with youth and young adults.

I was also impressed that the spectrum of viewpoints were represented, but while the full spectrum of the theological diversity in the PC(USA) was represented in these videos, progressive viewpoints were more likely to be presented. In particular, several presenters specifically mentioned that they were thankful for the increased inclusivity in the denomination from the passage of Amendment 10-A. On the other hand, several of the videos stayed completely away from the polarizing issues in the church and spoke of other bigger-picture issues without having an explicit leaning left or right. And some of the videos did not answer the questions at all and one is almost half promotional for a group. But all-in-all an interesting hour of watching.

Bruce has also scaled back his plans for this project which was originally to be focused on an Internet marathon of sorts. Now he has posted the videos and is considering how much time and energy he has for another phase of the project.

Personally, I may post my own “Why I am Presbyterian” two-part blog post later in the Summer. Two months ago I finished up a post with my conviction that if we prefer the Presbyterian form of church government we need to let people know why. Having issued that challenge I have now outlined my response and within the next month or two hope to have it ready for prime time. But don’t expect anything focused on one particular branch – I do intend to make it a “We Are Presbyterian” presentation in the broadest sense of the word.

The General Assembly Of The Church Of Scotland Chooses Their Trajectory

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Yesterday, in a session on a single report that lasted all day, the 2011 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland chose the trajectory it would take regarding the service of partnered homosexuals in the ministry. If all you want is the bottom line…

Executive Summary
By a vote of 351 to 294 the General Assembly chose to:

Resolve to consider further the lifting of the moratorium on the acceptance for training and ordination of persons in a same-sex relationship, and to that end instruct the Theological Commission to prepare a report for the General Assembly of 2013…

In addition, the Assembly lifted the moratorium on “induction into pastoral charges of ministers and deacons ordained before May 2009 who are in a same-sex relationship.”

So it is a resolution to keep on discussing it with an eye in a particular direction. The prohibition on ordinations has not been lifted yet, but the Assembly has chosen to point the church in the direction of permitting them in the future. While the action today is not subject to the Barrier Act it is anticipated, but not yet decided, that the final action would be.

For those who are very familiar with the Deliverance, it is my understanding (I did not hear the morning session) that every point passed as written (no amendments approved) with the Assembly choosing option 7b over 7a.

The Rest Of The Story…
First I want to comment on the nature of the discussion itself. All who followed it on Twitter, myself included, gave very high marks to the Moderator, the Rt. Rev. David Arnott, and the Convener of the Special Commission on Same-sex Relationships and the Ministry, Lord Hodge. Even though the debate was serious, and at times intense, the Moderator, Clerk and several of the commissioners helped control the tension with a nice amount of dry humor and quick wit. The debate itself was courteous and respectful and I did not catch any personal attacks or snide remarks. As for the content, having been through many of these debates before nothing jumped out at me as being a new argument for or against with all the usual scriptural and cultural appeals being made by both sides. None-the-less, at least one commissioner commented that he had his mind changed by the debate, but as to which specific point or item he did not say. It was an interesting morning (in my time zone) of listening and the debate usually moved along well and seldom got bogged down in polity or semantics.

I will point out that in the time I was listening, by my count not a single amendment was agreed to by the Assembly. Similarly, the Convener declined to accept any amendment on behalf of the Special Commission. He regularly expressed the view that the Commission had worked hard at crafting a Deliverance that reflected the work of the group and wanted to honor that work.

Walking through the Deliverance, found at the beginning of the Commission’s report, the Assembly worked through the first two items before lunch. They accepted the report (23/1), agreed to the necessity for pastoral care and that orientation is not in itself a barrier to holding office (23/2), and affirmed the unlawfulness of discrimination within the church and within the bounds of church law (23/3).

After lunch there was a spirited debate about part 23/4 which would “allow the induction into pastoral charges of ministers and deacons ordained before May 2009 who are in a same-sex relationship.” In case you did not pick up on the magic date of May 2009, that was the Assembly at which the Special Commission was created. While there were suggested amendments the item passed as written 393 to 252.

Item 23/5, to continue the silent period for public discussion on this issue was agreed to, as was item 23/6 to create a Theological Commission to carry this work forward.

And then the core issue was reached…

The Commission brought to the Assembly a choice between two options. The first, 23/7a began:

Resolve to consider further the implementation of an indefinite moratorium on the acceptance for training and ordination of persons in a same-sex relationship thus maintaining the traditional position of the Church…

The alternate, 23/7b opened with:

Resolve to consider further the lifting of the moratorium on the acceptance for training and ordination of persons in a same-sex relationship, and to that end instruct the Theological Commission to prepare a report for the General Assembly of 2013…

Another alternative, a “third way,” was moved by a former moderator, the Very Rev. Dr. Finlay Macdonald, it proposed that the Kirk was not ready to limit their choices and presented instructions to the newly formed Theological Commission to help the church continue the discussion. Specifically it opened with “instruct the Theological Commission to continue the process of
discernment initiated by the Report received by the General Assembly of
2007…” While respectfully received and favored by many, after discussion it was defeated by one of the closest votes of the day, 303 to 347.

The Assembly then debated the two original alternatives, another amendment to 7a was defeated, and a final vote was taken on the item with the commissioners favoring 7b, to move towards lifting the moratorium, by a vote of 294 for A and 351 for B.

The remaining two items, 23/8 to continue the moratorium on actions related to this issue and 23/9 to dismiss the Commission with thanks, were passed quickly. The Assembly then thanked Lord Hodge for his leadership with generous words from the Moderator and a standing ovation. And with that the consideration of the report, which began at 11 AM local time concluded a bit after 6 PM (with a break for lunch).

So, with the moratoriums on speaking and action on these issues still in place, for the moment nothing has changed in the Church of Scotland. However, with the creation of the Theological Commission and the agreed direction of their deliberations the Kirk has set a direction for the future that everyone expects will result in the lifting of the restriction on same-sex partnered individuals being ordained to office. For completeness, here is the full text of 24/7b which was approved:

7(b) Resolve to consider further the lifting of the moratorium on the acceptance for training and ordination of persons in a same-sex relationship, and to that end instruct the Theological Commission to prepare a report for the General Assembly of 2013 containing:

(i) a theological discussion of issues around same-sex relationships, civil partnerships and marriage;

(ii) an examination of whether, if the Church were to allow its ministers freedom of conscience in deciding whether to bless same-sex relationships involving life-long commitments, the recognition of such lifelong relationships should take the form of a blessing of a civil partnership or should involve a liturgy to recognise and celebrate commitments which the parties enter into in a Church service in addition to the civil partnership, and if so to recommend liturgy therefor;

(iii) an examination of whether persons, who have entered into a civil partnership and have made lifelong commitments in a Church ceremony, should be eligible for admission for training, ordination and induction as ministers of Word and Sacrament or deacons in the context that no member of Presbytery will be required to take part in such ordination or induction against his or her conscience; and to report to the General Assembly of 2013.

I want to wrap up here with two more items. The first are links to several other blogs that discuss this change and give observations: Chris Hoskins, Stewart Cutler, Bryan Kerr, Stafford Carson, and Rev Shuna.

Second, I can’t leave this topic without looking at the numbers. In the three votes I mention above the prevailing side in the vote had 60.9% of the votes on 23/4, 53.4% on the alternative amendment, and 54.4% on the selection of 7b. For comparison, in my earlier post about the Commission report and the consultation they had with presbyteries and kirk session, they found that 48.9% of the responding presbytery members did not favor the church permitting partnered homosexuals in ordained positions while 41.4% did favor ordination. The differences could be attributed to the fact one was a consultation and the other an actual vote. There could also be differences in the populations sampled and as we see in other denominations the representatives to the national meeting being more progressive than the local members. The differences could also be easily explained by the fact that the responses were to different questions. Or, since this was only setting a direction and not making a final decision there may be an openness to continuing the discussion in this direction without the need to commit at this point.

In conclusion, it is worth pointing out the global community that was online for this session. The Kirk streamed 1.7TB of data yesterday and those commenting on Twitter came from many corners of the world and stayed up late or got up early to follow the proceedings. From my perspective it was a great social media community and a demonstration of how social media has enhanced Global Presbyterianism. Thanks to all of you who were tweeting for the stimulating interaction. But, this interest also demonstrated the “lightning rod” issue that I have talked about — This morning @generalassembly tweeted “We seem to be missing some several thousand viewers since yesterday. If you see them, please tell them we’re here all week!” For those of you who could not join us, you missed another interesting day and some good discussion in the Assembly and on Twitter about youth and the church. I’ll comment more on that at another time.

So, the Church of Scotland has more work to do, both in this Assembly and with their new Theological Commission to report back in 2013. Stay tuned…

A Couple Of Changes In The PC(USA)

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In the last few hours in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) there have been indications of a couple of interesting changes which I think are telling of the direction of the denomination.

Yes, the first one is the unofficial passage of Amendment 10-A — as of this evening the gahelp web site lists the vote as 88-68. The official vote tally will require a bit of additional time for the current voting to be reported and recorded. From the buzz on the internet, especially Twitter, we know that today the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area became the 87th presbytery to approve the Amendment giving it the majority for approval, followed by Pacific Presbytery. The vote is not over, because this is about the discussion as much as the outcome, but unofficially it appears that its passage is assured. It will be effective on July 10, 2011.

While that is a change, we must remind ourselves exactly what the change is. What amendment 10-A does is remove a specific categorical restriction to the ordination standards by replacing the “fidelity and chastity” standards section with new language that calls on officers to “to submit joyfully to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in all aspects of life” and for ordaining bodies to examine them on the Scriptural and confessional requirements. But we must also remember that 10-A does not require a new inclusive standard when it comes to self-affirming practicing homosexuals. The patch-work of interpretation I have heard over the last few days does regularly affirm the renewed importance of the ordaining body in the examination and the expected issues that will arise as different ordaining bodies reach differing conclusions from their examinations. In short, the PC(USA) has allowed, but not mandated, the ordination of same-sex partnered individuals and passed the control to the lower governing bodies.

The second happening this evening I think is equally telling and that happening is the power of social media and the open source church. Consider this – the Office of the General Assembly issued a news item, letter and Advisory Opinion, and some video messages within minutes of the announcement of the results of the vote in the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area. In my experience, for the denomination to act this quickly or before official confirmation is unheard of. Got to give them credit for 1) being prepared and 2) taking the social media crowd seriously.

Speaking of social media, at the height of the presbytery meetings this evening I was getting tweets with the #pcusa hashtag at the rate of about one per second. While we were not trending, several people reported the “fail whale” (The Twitter screen for heavy system use) and so we may have been contributing to the server overload.

It was also interesting to note that the OGA was not the only ones ready. Within an hour or two several groups had statements up including the Covenant Network, Presbyterian Outlook, Presbyterians for Renewal and More Light Presbyterians.

The point here is that the rapid response to this news shows how the denomination’s landscape has changed regarding social media and instantaneous communication. Organizations were on-line watching and responded very quickly to the news with either new material or were ready with prepared remarks.

Finally, several mainstream news organizations were ready with stories but I think the first one out was from the Associated Press and writer Rachel Zoll is to be commended for a good article that gets our Presbyterian polity correct. I’m sure we will see some good examples of the opposite tomorrow.

Well, I have lots more to say but it is late so no more tonight. Over the next few days I’ll try to find time to crunch numbers and consider some more of how we got here. But the heavy use and response on social media was to me just as interesting as the voting result itself and just as telling about what is happening in certain corners of the PC(USA).

Further Thoughts On The Fellowship PC(USA)

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Well, I have had a couple of days to reflect on the Fellowship PC(USA) letter, announcement, and white paper. I have also had a bit of time to reflect on my own reaction and ask if I jumped too quickly. The answer to that is maybe yes and maybe no. More on that at the end. But first, some comments on the white paper and the developments so far.

Time For Something New – A Fellowship PC(USA) white paper

I have now read the white paper referenced in the original letter and for those who have not read it, it is essentially an extended discussion of the same material as the letter. In fact, the letter is pretty much a condensed version of the white paper with the meeting announcement and the signatures added.

On the side that maybe I did respond too quickly, I was interested to see that the extended discussion in the white paper addresses a couple of the issues I had with the letter. On the topic of the conflict and decline in the PC(USA) being about more than the homosexuality issue, the white paper contains this paragraph which the letter does not:

Certainly none of these issues are unique to the PCUSA, [sic] but are all part of larger cultural forces. But what is the way forward? Is there a future beyond the decline as yet unseen? Is there a way to avoid endless fights, to regain consensus on the essence of the Christian faith? We see no plan coming from any quarter, leaving a continued drift into obsolescence.

While it does not seem to consider the broad range of issues the mainline/oldline faces, at least it acknowledges the “larger cultural forces” that are in play here.

Likewise, a couple of my other concerns are moderated in the white paper. Regarding the diversity and inclusively, they say that they are speaking as a group of pastors but explicitly say “We call others of a like mind to envision a new future…” Regarding the reference to the PC(USA) as “deathly ill” that was a lightning rod in the letter, the phrase is not used in the white paper but instead they say “The PCUSA [sic] is in trouble on many fronts.” (And as you can see the white paper uses my less-preferred acronym PCUSA instead of the PC(USA) used in the letter.) And finally, there is more acknowledgement of similar predecessor organizations and explanation of why a new one:

We recognize that there are still islands of hope across the church, but they do not seem to represent a movement. Many faithful groups and organizations have been devoted to the renewal of the PCUSA, and they have offered valuable ministry for many years. Yet it appears they have simply helped slow down a larger story of decline. Is it time to acknowledge that something in the PCUSA system is dying?

and

In many ways this [new] association may resemble some of the voluntary organizations of the past (PGF, PFR, etc.) but it is only a way station to something else. It is an intermediate tool to begin to bring together like minded congregations and pastors to begin the work of another future, different than the current PCUSA.

So some of these ideas are more developed in the 3 1/2 page white paper than they are in the 2 page letter.

Response

It was interesting to see how quickly word spread about the original letter on Twitter and the concerns that many people expressed. This seems to have led to two rapid responses.

The Fellowship PC(USA) saw a need to respond quickly and the day following the distribution of the letter they put out a one-page FAQ addressing some of the concerns I and others had. Specifically, they address the narrow demographic of the original group (white, male, pastors mostly of larger “tall-steeple” churches). The response is that this letter was only the beginning of a conversation that they want to broadly include all aspects of the church. Of course, they get another negative comment from me because in an apparent effort to say that the conversation should include more than clergy they use the phrase “clergy/non-ordained as equal partners.” (Ouch! That hurt this ruling elder.) This has now been changed to “clergy/laity.” Sorry, no better. At best this comes off as a technical glitch that in either wording does not include ruling elders as ordained partners in governance with teaching elders (clergy). At worst, while probably not intended to be so, it strikes me as a Freudian slip or condescending comment that teaching elders are somehow superior to ruling elders in all this. OK, soapbox mode off. (And yes, if you think I am being super-sensitive about this one little detail, this GA Junkie is by nature super-sensitive to that one little detail. Sorry if that bothers you.)

The FAQ also addresses the relationship to the New Wineskins Association of Churches, other renewal groups, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church and why their plan is better, different, reasonable, or something like that.

The Fellowship has also updated the letter (the old link is broken) with a revised one that appears to be the same text but has a longer list of signatories that now includes ruling elders and women. The original seven names are there for the steering committee, but the 28 names for concurring pastors has grown to 95 (including a couple of women) and there is now a category for Concurring Elders, Lay Leaders and Parachurch Leaders with 15 names. (And I suspect that this will be a dynamic document that will be updated as more individuals sign on.)

The Fellowship letter and viral response, possibly influenced by the concurrent meeting of the Middle Governing Bodies Commission, elicited a response from the PC(USA) leadership with a letter on Friday from Moderator Cynthia Bolbach, Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons, and GAMC Executive Director Linda Valentine. This message, titled Future of the church: GA leaders invite all Presbyterians to join in conversation, cites not just the letter but several more conversations going on in the PC(USA) through the MGB Commission, and other task forces. One of their concluding lines is “We ask that those who would challenge us also join with all of us across the church as we work together to make that happen.” I also applaud their openness to the whole of the Presbyterian family as they address the letter to “All Presbyterians” and part-way through the letter say “Presbyterians everywhere long for vibrant congregations and communities
of faith, and relationships built upon trust and our common faith in
Jesus Christ.”

I mention this broad-mindedness since these developments have caught the attention of the wider Presbyterian family in the blogosphere and there are comments about it by David Fischler at Reformed Pastor and Benjamin Glaser at Mountains and Magnolias. Within the PC(USA) ranks there is a nice analysis by Katie Mulligan who has a summary of the demographics of the churches represented by the original signatories. (Thanks Katie. It was something I started to do, but as the signatory list became a moving target I reorganized my thoughts and it will appear as a slightly different statistical analysis in the future.)

There is also an unofficial response
from the affinity group Voices for Justice. They reject the viewpoint
the Fellowship letter has of the PC(USA) and urge working together as
one denomination.

A Case Study in Social Media

Probably what interests me the most in all of this is how it played out. As best as I can tell, this went viral, or as viral as something can go within the denomination, within about five or six hours. The letter and the Fellowship group itself seem like somewhere we have been before and we will see if it plays out any differently. How this played on Twitter is something else altogether and I’m not sure anything like this has spread through the PC(USA) Twitter community in the same way.

So here is the timeline from my perspective (all time PST)(note: items marked * have been added or updated):

Feb. 2, 10:46 AM – Fellowship letter hits my email box
Feb. 2, 11:32 AM – Tweet from @preslayman announcing their posting of the letter – The first tweet I can find.
Feb. 2, 12:32 PM – John Shuck posted his first blog entry, tweeted announcement at 1:25 PM
Feb. 2, 3:00 PM – Tweet from @ktday that asks “what do you think of this” – quickly and heavily retweeted; beginning of the flood of tweets
Feb. 2, 3:17 PM – @lscanlon of the Outlook puts out a series of tweets reporting the letter
Feb. 2, 3:32 PM – My first blog post, I tweeted announcement of it at same time
Feb. 2, 7:12 PM – Time stamp on the Outlook article.*
Feb. 3, 2:31 PM – First tweet I saw about the Fellowship FAQ, from @CharlotteElia
Feb. 4, 8:56 AM – @leahjohnson posts first tweet I found about the PC(USA) leadership response*
Feb. 4, 9:01 AM – @Presbyterian official announcement by tweet of the denomination leadership response
Feb. 4, 10:10 AM – Katie Mulligan posted her blog article
Feb. 4, 11:07 AM – @shuckandjive announces the Voices for Justice response

Now that is what I saw. Please let me know if you have other important events in this history that should be on the time line. And I am going to keep researching it myself and it may grow.

So, I have to give credit to the Fellowship leadership, or at least their response team, for being able to turn around a response FAQ in 27 hours. Nice job also by the denominational leadership for having a comment out in less than 48 hours.

In the realm of social media this is a very interesting development – that in the course of a day or two a topic could gather so much attention that the major parties each feel the need, or pressure, to weigh in on the subject. And that the originating organization received enough criticism and critique that they so quickly issued a clarification and updated list of names. In case you don’t think the world of communications has changed you need to take a serious look at how a topic, admittedly a hot one but one of limited interest outside our circle of tech-savvy and enthusiastic participants, has played out in just 48 hours.

And I would note that the PC(USA) is not alone in this. In my observation of the PCA voting on their Book of Church Order amendments this year, and the ultimate non-concurrence by the presbyteries, social media, especially the blogosphere, played a major role.

So here I am commenting on it 72 hours after it broke. Was my first response reasonable? As I comment above, it was on only one piece of the evidence and it took me a couple more days to find time to read the white paper. But then again, maybe it was. The situation developed rapidly and having my own rapid response to the letter meant that the initial concerns I raised were among those addressed in the clarification the next day.

Now the big question – is all of this a good thing? I will leave the ultimate answer up to each of you. I have, in a bit of a play within a play, personally demonstrated what I see as both the negatives and the positives — my initial response was not as well developed as it could have been but in the reality of the new social media world it helped (I would hope) to propel the conversation forward. Don’t we live in interesting times…

So where from here? It will be very interesting to see what further role social media plays in this going forward. Will this discussion become a topic for more narrowly focused groups who continue their work off-line, or will the new realities force or require this topic to remain viable in the extended social media community of the PC(USA). It will be interesting to see, and I would expect that if this Fellowship initiative is to really propel discussion of the future of the PC(USA) they will need to embrace the reality of the connected church. I think we need a hashtag.

Church Of Scotland Redesigns Their Web Page

Web 2.0 And The Internet Are Changing The World — Follow-up

More Official Presbyterians On Social Media

New Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Web Site

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Well, as promised the new web site design for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has been rolled out late today just in time for the start of the General Assembly meeting beginning on Saturday.

My first impression is very positive. It has interactive media on the front page, a nice clean feel at the top, and good navigation links. It is a bit more cluttered at the bottom of the front page. A little checking shows that the front page style is not propagated throughout the site — There is a new style that differs from the front for the GAMC, and the OGA pages still retain the same look and feel as they did yesterday.

As for URL’s there is a new system that seems logical as far as I have explored it. Previously a web page was a subdirectory of the pcusa.org address. Now it is a subdomain of the site. For example, the General Assembly page was www.pcusa.org/ga219 and it is now ga219.pcusa.org and the OGA was www.pcusa.org/oga and it similarly is now oga.pcusa.org. For simple cases like these two the old addresses forward. However, more complicated cases do not follow this rule: www.pcusa.org/research does forward, but not to research.pcusa.org but to gamc.pcusa.org/ministries/research. And not everything forwards — a lot of my previous links are now broken. For example, the documents I linked to earlier today are still generally valid links, although one is now broken, and the nice index page for comparative statistics is gone! There is now a resource page that lists each table seperatly. That may take some time to get through. And one other inconsistancy — if you want to get to the current GA it is ga219.pcusa.org as I mentioned above. All the previous GA’s are oga.pcusa.org/ga216 , or whatever GA you want.

The one other feature of the web site is the quick and easy access to the store. (And while advertised as a ministry of the GAMC it has its own subdomain and is not under the GAMC domain.) I would also note that the other arms, like the Presbyterian Foundation, PILP, and Publishing appear to retain their old styles. (And when I typed “investment and loan program” in the search it returned a very plain page with the styles stripped out or invalid.) Also the new search is not nearly as useful. The previous one returned a ministry arm, committee or office link at the top if it matched your search above the usual list of documents. Now you just get the documents listed out.

I’ll keep looking but it will take a little getting used to. And I don’t know how many of the items I mention above are bugs and how many are features. I’m sure there is more testing and patching to do so I look forward to the continued work. And I’ll start looking to fix all my broken links…

The 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) — Candidates For Moderator And… (1) Social Media

As I have been analyzing the nominees standing for Moderator of the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) I have noticed a number of interesting things. I’ll do an analysis of their statements and positions in the next post, but in compiling this information I noticed a wide range of approaches to their use of social media in connecting with the church.

Before I begin, let me acknowledge that in addition to the usual search engines, including Facebook search and Twitter search, I have to thank Robert Austell and his GAhelp.net Moderators page as well as the information from the “In their own words” feature published by the Layman. And for comments on the role of the Moderator and the election of the Moderator you can check out my GA 101 article “The Moderator — All Things In Moderation.”

Before I launch into this let me answer the legitimate question “Why does this matter?” I would say that it matters because individuals on the national level of the PC(USA) have now bought into the idea that the world has changed and that new technology is the way to go. After all, the 219th is supposed to be the first paper-free Assembly. At the 218th GA the election of Bruce Reyes-Chow as the Moderator was supposed to herald a new day and the church was now adopting technology and moving into the ~~20^th~~ 21^st Century. Now I think that we can all agree on two things: 1) Bruce’s use of social media is exceptional and 2) Vice-Moderator Byron Wade did an admirable job trying to keep up with Bruce. For the record you can follow Bruce on his personal blog, Moderator’s blog, church blog, Facebook , Twitter, and podcast , to name only some of his social media connections. And in my opinion, Byron has really held his own to Bruce by writing a really excellent blog (think quality not quantity), as well as his Facebook and Twitter presence.

The other thing I am trying to figure out for this analysis is what are typical “Moderator campaign” numbers for social media followers. At the present time Bruce has 4996 Facebook friends (there is a limit of 5000) and 2688 Twitter followers. Byron has 1881 Facebook friends and 519 Twitter followers. But their numbers increased dramatically after they were elected and I don’t know what their stats were during the campaign. Maybe a good comparison would be the Rev. Bill Teng, who I would judge as the second-most social media savvy nominee for the 218th. He currently has 531 Facebook friends. Interestingly, the current nominee I would judge most social media connected in the pool for the 219th GA is Vice-Mod nominee Landon Whitsitt who has 596 Facebook friends and 184 Twitter followers. So about the 500-600 range for a well-connected nominee before election? What about the rest of this year’s pool…

Web page
This is technically old-school Web 1.0 and even Bruce has not had one of these. These are sites with static web pages that do not include interaction through comments.

Moderator nominee Rev. James Belle/ Vice-Mod nominee Rev. Wonjae Choi – No Moderator specific site I could find.

Moderator nominee Elder Cynthia Bolbach/ Vice-Mod nominee Rev. Landon Whitsitt – No Moderator specific site I could find.

Moderator nominee Rev. Jin S. Kim/ Vice-Mod nominee Rev. Matt Johnson – No Moderator specific site I could find.

Moderator nominee Rev. Maggie Lauterer/ Vice-Mod nominee Rev. Theresa Cho – Moderator specific site

Moderator nominee Rev. Julia Leeth/ Vice-Mod nominee Rev. Hector Reynoso – Dynamic (music, scripting) site but no interaction

Moderator nominee Rev. Eric Nielsen/Vice-Mod nominee Rev. Marilyn Gamm – Moderator specific site

Blog/Web 2.0 Site
This is like a traditional web site but new articles are easily posted in sequence, there is interaction through comments and the content can be tracked through a “feed” using RSS or Atom.

Belle/ Choi -No blog I could find.

Bolbach/ Whitsitt – Food for Thought (11 entries, all posts closed for commenting) (Landon also has a personal blog with occasional Mod comments.)

Kim/ Johnson –New Church Rising/GA Moderatorial (The main blog has been active as the church blog since October 2009. The GA Moderatorial specific section has two posts.)

Lauterer/ Cho – Finding Our Voice (Brand new this week, one post)

Leeth/ Reynoso- None I could find

Nielsen/Gamm -The website has a blog page but it appears to only be used to comment to the Rev. Nielsen. No postings

Facebook
It appears that most nominees have personal Facebook pages but since they are not Moderator related and have privacy set to keep the general public out I won’t link to them. Here are the Moderator-related pages I found:

Bolbach/Whitsitt
Lauterer/Cho
Nielson/Gamm

Twitter
Most of the nominees have Twitter accounts. While Cynthia Bolbach has one listed in the Mod lists, it is private so not Moderator related and not listed here. Here are the others I know of and their statistics:

	Twitter name	Followers	Following	Tweets
Theresa Cho	@theresaecho	73	103	132
Maggie Lauterer	@maggielauterer	16	13	9
Julia Leeth	@julia_leeth	10	0	10
Hector Reynoso	@elvicemoderator	5	16	7
Landon Whitsitt	@landonw	184	171	7155

Other
I was very impressed that two of the nominees also have items up on YouTube:

Bolbach
Lauterer
Nielsen

That is what I and other web sites know about. If I have missed anything or something new is launched let me know and I’ll update the article.

Analysis and Conclusion
As I look at these statistics I have a hard time seeing any of these candidates stepping up to anywhere near the social media connectedness that Bruce and Byron established right from the start, with the obvious exception of Landon. For the other candidates the level of connectedness so far gives the impression that they are either just getting their feet wet in this sphere or are not placing a major emphasis upon it.

So the question is, does it matter? If you are of the opinion that the world has not changed then all this is probably interesting but not important. Or, with the stereotype of the typical Presbyterian being of the “greatest” or “boomer” generation that does not heavily invest their connectedness in social media, this lower penetration into Web 2.0 may be perfectly reasonable since few of the commissioners, whose votes count, would be influenced.

But I think that this does make a difference at two levels. The first is that the YADs, now YAADs, have traditionally predicted the outcome of the Moderator election on their first advisory vote. One has to ask if their enthusiasm for a nominee has a conscious or unconscious influence on the commissioners in their voting. If so, connecting with the YAADs in their native media would be helpful to a nominee.

The second place that I think it makes a difference is connecting with the larger church. While I don’t know for certain, I have to think that a Moderator nominee who shows they can connect with the younger members, and potential members, of the denomination would be viewed favorably by commissioners when they make their decisions, especially if they are thinking about the graying of the church. But the other half of the battle is for the successful nominee to actually be connected after they are elected.

As I look through all these media statistics I have trouble seeing any of the Moderator nominees with a strong social media presence or potential. Conventional wisdom is that a Vice-Moderator choice has little, if any, affect on the Moderator voting so I don’t know if Landon’s strong on-line presence would be any substantial support to Cynthia Bolbach. But looking through this data that is the only real strength I see at the moment.

Finally, this post is not intended to pressure any of the nominees into redesigning their campaigns to have a more substantial Web 2.0 component. On the one hand I think it is a little too late for that and on the other I think what is more dangerous than not having a social media connection is one that is forced and unauthentic. Web 2.0 is, after all, about being yourself and being transparent, right? My advice is to be yourself, but try to have your on-line presence reflect who you are.

With 17 days left before the election I would not expect a change in presentation now to make a difference in the Moderator election. So maybe this is more an argument for the successful nominee to figure out how to integrate more social media into their time as Moderator. Do we expect a repeat of Bruce and Byron’s presence — probably not. But by the same token we would expect the Moderatorial term to reflect that the world has changed, at least if we believe that it has. Stay tuned to see how they do.