Category Archives: Church Virtual

Where Two Or Three Are Gathered

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“But that means they won’t have to come to church.”

I wonder if Johannes Gutenberg heard that?

What happened after Gutenberg goes and prints up a bunch of Bibles using moveable type? How many people come back to him and wonder about what will happen to the church now that more copies of the Bible are available and can be distributed more widely? Did anyone fear that the church was threatened? Was there a concern that this was not how you “did church?”

I do realize that this is significantly simplifying the story. On one level I’m not sure there was much concern about losing “control” – whatever that might have been – because literacy levels were not high enough and costs were not low enough that a common person would be able to read or afford having a complete Bible in their home. In addition, Gutenberg had his own problems and his equipment was seized by creditors pretty quickly as well.

But my point is that rather than being a threat to the church the printing of Bibles and other religious literature was actually a boon and is one of the factors cited in the spread of the Reformation.

I’m not going to do a comprehensive search or discussion of the church and technology, but suffice it to say that with the advancement of technology the church found ways to put it to use and advance its causes as well. Faster and easier travel, advances in printing, radio and television broadcast technology — all brought benefits to the advance of religion.

Which brings us to current events — a crazy former Moderator of the General Assembly and an idea that has gotten me interested and involved. (And for the record, he has accepted the title of “crazy” for this and other things.)

In case you have not heard the Very Reverend* Bruce Reyes-Chow has too much time on his hands and to give him something to do he has proposed planting “a church online.” You can check out more in his introduction, and articles from the Outlook and the Layman. And yes, if you look down to the list of names of co-conspirators you will find mine. And it is starting to get rolling over on Facebook (but don’t expect it to stay there).

So what the heck is going on here?

There is a lot I could say about this, and as it advances I probably will, but let me discuss four specific points that represent the critical areas that addressed my theological concerns and got me interested. (And as I discuss these please be clear that I am only speaking for myself but that I have sensed agreement with others on these ideas.)

1) A church that meets online – not an online church. From the beginning Bruce made it clear that this church plant was not going to be a stereotype online church.  I have not done an extensive survey, but there are a lot of web sites that will provide various models and views of on-line religious practice. If you want a worship service made up of components randomly chosen from a collection there is the Virtual Church which offers “No two VirtualChurch.com services are the same. Over 365 Billion possibilities!” (The thought of that probably sends shivers down the spine of other Reformed theologians like it does to me.) On the other end is the First Presbyterian Church of Second Life. This is an established and on-going community that is exploring one approach to being a faith community online.

In this new endeavor I, and the rest of the initial group, see the online component as only one manifestation of our faith life together.  Which brings me to my second point…

2) Where two or three are gathered – From the onset of discussions this has been the make-or-break issue for me. This church must not be about turning on your computer, attending worship, and then surfing on to something else not to return for another seven days. In my study and thinking the Christian Church is about incarnation. Jesus was incarnate as a human being. We are called to be the Body of Christ and therefore must be incarnate to each other and the world.

So what does this mean in the context on a church online? I’m not sure I fully know the answer and that is why I am so looking forward to this journey ahead. In my current thinking there are a number of ways that this might be developed.  In urban regions with a number of individuals affiliated with the church there would be regular opportunities to gather for local worship, the study of scripture, table fellowship and/or mission and service. On a regional basis less-frequent but regular gatherings for these sorts of things would be a possibility. For those in isolated situations – and I mean that in multiple senses of the word – ways should be found to provide support in a physical sense as well as in a virtual sense.

The other component of gathering in Christ’s name is that I have yet to find a theologically satisfying way to explain not being present face-to-face for the sacraments. This does not mean that we are all together in one place. But it does mean that to the extent possible when the community gathers for Baptism and the Lord’s Supper we find ways to gather in a real sense to share the mystery of these means of Grace. It may be small groups around the globe forming a larger community, but we need to think about how to share the presence of Christ in the water and the elements in a real sense.

The bottom line to me is that the members of this community must be present to each other and the world in both virtual and real ways as we show the love of Christ.

3) Reformed – I am excited about this opportunity to think anew about what it means to be the church in today’s technological environment against the existing framework of our Reformed faith. That may not be the starting point everyone wants and I have no problem with that. But in beginning this project we have agreed to be Presbyterian about it. I am waiting to see what sort of balance of ardor and order we strike.

4) This manifestation probably can not be all things to all people – I know that Paul talked about being all things to all people, but the church long ago figured out that a particular church has trouble doing that.  This community will have a particular ethos that some people will not agree with. For that matter, the whole idea of doing this with an online component is a problem for many.

So be it — we accept that as diversity and not competition and move on. While I expect the community we are forming to be welcoming I also expect it to have a particular “look and feel” that will not be what everyone is looking for.  If someone does not feel comfortable with this way of “doing church” I would hope that we encourage and help them find another faith community where the Word is preached, the Sacraments administered, discipline is uprightly practiced, and they do feel comfortable.

Finally, I would comment that there is no target audience – we want the group to develop organically and see where it goes. With this in mind I am very curious to see what will develop. There are any number of reasons someone might be interested in this community — people could be isolated by geography, theology, economics, society, schedule, culture. All of these are valid and possible reasons for seeking out a virtual community. But in doing so my hope for this journey is that the virtual community is the beginning and not the end. That a church online is a place that face-to-face fellowship can develop. That the Church Virtual is not just a virtual church.

Those are my thoughts and dreams for this crazy idea. Where this journey will go I don’t know — but I am looking forward to it.

If you are interested in initial thoughts from other members of the beginning group check out:

Footnote: * The title Very Reverend is used in some Presbyterian branches, but not usually American Presbyterian churches, to designate a former Moderator of the General Assembly if they are a teaching elder.

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

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Last week the journal Nature published a news piece, Peer Review: Trial by Twitter , about the changes that social media, blogs and instant communication are having on how science is done, or more specifically, how science is reviewed.  For those thinking about this sort of thing in any realm I would suggest you have a look.

I won’t rehash the history of this, you can check out my earlier post, but here are a couple of the good lines in the new article about how things have changed:

Papers are increasingly being taken apart in blogs, on Twitter and on
other social media within hours rather than years, and in public, rather
than at small conferences or in private conversation.

…

To many researchers, such rapid response is all to the good, because it
weeds out sloppy work faster. “When some of these things sit around in
the scientific literature for a long time, they can do damage: they can
influence what people work on, they can influence whole fields,” says
[David] Goldstein [director of Duke University’s Center for Human Genome
Variation].

…

For many researchers, the pace and tone of this online review can be
intimidating — and can sometimes feel like an attack. How are authors
supposed to respond to critiques coming from all directions? Should they
even respond at all? Or should they confine their replies to the
conventional, more deliberative realm of conferences and journals? “The
speed of communication is ahead of the sheer time needed to think and
get in the lab and work,” said Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a postdoctoral fellow
at the NASA Astrobiology Institute in Mountain View, California, and
the lead author on the arsenic paper. Aptly enough, she circulated that
comment as a tweet on Twitter, which is used by many scientists to call
attention to longer articles and blog posts.

and finally

To bring some order to this chaos, it looks as though a new set of
cultural norms will be needed, along with an online infrastructure to
support them.

The article then has a good discussion of where fast, open reviews have been tried as well has whether or not they worked.  It also outlines some interesting ways that social media and Web 2.0 are being integrated into the traditional infrastructure.  I’ll leave it for those interested in this sort of thing to have a closer look.

Web 2.0 Meets Ecclesiastical Discipline — Where Are The Lines Of Responsible Blogging?

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I think many of us expected it to be only a matter of time before these two worlds collided and while blogging has been increasing in religious circles it appears we now have, to my knowledge at least, the first case in Presbyterian circles of possible ecclesiastical discipline for statements made while blogging.  More on that in a moment, but first a little perspective…

Public airing of theological discussions goes back at least as far as a crazy German monk who annoyed Pope Leo X by nailing 95 Theses to a chapel door in Wittenberg.  It may seem strange to us today but in that time and place it was Martin’s equivalent of blogging back in 1517.

But as Presbyterians our system has some interesting features that help inform our understanding of discussion and church governance.  Going back to the “Radical Principles of Presbyterianism” that statement includes:

[T]hat a larger part of the Church, or a representation of it, should govern a smaller, or determine matters of controversy which arise therein; that, in like manner, a representation of the whole should govern and determine in regard to every part, and to all the parts united: that is, that a majority shall govern;

This has been understood to include the necessity of meeting together, or as the PC(USA) Book of Order puts it [G-4.0301e]

e. Decisions shall be reached in governing bodies by vote, following opportunity for discussion, and a majority shall govern;

So within the Presbyterian system there are two principles I want to highlight at this juncture: 1) The system is representative, having Elders, Teaching and Ruling, chosen by God through the voice of the people that are responsible for most of the decision making.  2) That these representatives come together for conducting business, to join together in discerning the will of God at prescribed times and places.

In the long run point number one above may be the more interesting and complicated of the two.  For today, let me side-step this point by observing that the vast majority of those on the internet discussing the fine points of Presbyterian polity are Teaching and Ruling Elders or candidates working to be ordained as Teaching Elders.  But as much as Presbyterianism is a step away from an episcopal system towards democratization of the ecclesiastical structure, it will be important to think through the implications of the internet when everyone in the denomination can contribute to doctrinal, polity and theological discussions in near real time.  What does it look like when you scale up the congregational structure from the level of a particular church to the level of national discussion.  (For some very interesting thinking about that you can start reading TE Landon Whitsitt’s chapter drafts for The Open Source Church.)

Let me focus instead on the second point above — that discussions related to governing body decisions are intended to occur in the face-to-face environment of the judicatory meeting, and what happens when they happen outside that circle.

I want to start out by noting that taking issues out of the judicatory and into public forum is noting new.  As I mentioned above, in a sense Dr. Martin Luther did that in 1517, and it has happened on a regular basis ever since.  Many individuals who had either reputation or means of communication have taken advantage of them.

Let me give two contrasting examples from the Presbyterian Church in Canada during the church union movement early in the twentieth century.  I take these from N. Keith Clifford’s book The Resistance To Church Union In Canada 1904-1939.

The first individual is Robert Campbell, senior clerk of the General Assembly.  He was the first major opponent of church union and beginning in 1904 he argued against it based on a number of different issues.  As only us Presbyterian polity wonks could appreciate, while much of his theological argument did not get significant traction, he had a certain level of agreement from some prominent proponents of union regarding specific polity arguments he made, especially concerning the process of sending the union question down to the presbyteries under the Barrier Act.  Leave it to the Presbyterians to rally around process.  As Clifford says [pg. 26]

There were indeed others who had doubts about union, but it was Campbell who defined the issues, exposed the irregularity of the unionists’ procedure, and proposed the alternative around which the first resistance organization crystallized.  Once the resistance became organized outside the structures of the church however, Campbell’s position as senior clerk of the assembly prevented him from assuming leadership of the movement, and he gradually slipped into the background.

His “slipping into the background” did not prevent him from taking his stand and voicing his opinion in public and he published a couple of pamphlets and one book ably making the case against union and generally forcing the unionists to address, and even agree with, his objections.  However, Clifford later speaks of his leadership [pg. 41] when new alliances were forming against union:

The problem in this instance was not Campbell’s background but his position as senior clerk.  He had been appointed to this permanent position in 1892, more than a decade before the church union question appeared on the assembly’s agenda.  Consequently, he saw himself as a leader of the whole church and not just a part of it.  When the dissidents organized in 1910, therefore, he would not accept a leadership position, even though the purpose of the group was to support his alternative of federation.  Thus, when the resistance movement began to take on a life of its own, shaped by those who assumed leadership, Campbell gradually faded into the background of the controversy to the point where later opponents of union failed to appreciate that except for his efforts the unionists might very well have accomplished their purpose in 1912.

Furthermore, after 1912, no one who was opposed to union was elected moderator or appointed to any major committee responsibility in the church.  As a result, from 1913 until his death in March 1921, [ed. note: Union was accomplished in 1925] Campbell served an assembly dominated by unionists.  His role tended to deflect attention even further  from his importance as an early opponent of union.  The ironic twist  in all this was that the unionists recognized the significance of Campbell’s refusal to accept an office in any of the resistance organizations, and when he died, they were the only one who publicly eulogized him for his service to the church during his twenty-nine years as clerk of the General Assembly.

Clifford goes on to quote some of the eulogies.  One said that while they might have differed with him in opinion, “yet we never ceased to admire the lucidity of his argument, his confidence that he was right, and the courtesy with which he treated an opponent.”  Another spoke of him as a “keen debater” who could take as well as give but “he was without bitterness and never allowed public differences to interfere with private friendships.”

On the other hand, where there have been repeated tensions about what is printed and how it is written has been in official publications of Presbyterian branches.  The Canadian union debate was no different.  Following the 1910 General Assembly meeting Dr. Ephraim Scott, editor of the official publication the Presbyterian Record became a main target.  Dr. Scott had recorded a dissent to the Assembly action to send the union proposals to the presbyteries and that and later public criticism of the unionists actions made him a target.  There were calls for him to resign if he could not support the official position of the Assembly and in the following year various charges and rebuttals were publicly aired.  At the 1911 Assembly the outgoing Moderator said that the Record was “not worthy of the church and needed shaking up.”  [Clifford, pg. 30]  An amendment to a committee report was proposed that would require faithful representation of the Assembly action or strict neutrality.  Clifford reports that the amendment failed because one prominent unionist argued the reporting was not sufficiently biased to remove the editor and another respected commissioner, at that time neutral on union, argued that the church press should be free and the editor could express his own views.  It also helped that presbytery voting on the 1910 proposal was showing weaker support for union than the proponents expected and they realized that there was a longer road ahead than they had reckoned.  But it should be noted that, as Clifford tells it, few – if any – specific charges were brought against Scott and none were validated.  As the editor he was a convenient and high-profile target.

As I said a moment ago, the use of an official publication by the editor to advocate a particular position is still a major issue and in the last couple of years we have seen criticism in the Free Church of Scotland for advocating the flexibility to have worship music beyond unaccompanied psalm singing, in the Church of Scotland in advance of the 2009 Assembly where the editor advocated her stance on the ordination standards issue, and recent criticism of the PC(USA)’s Presbyterians Today for taking a position that seemed to presume adoption of the Belhar Confession.

Related to the situation I’ll mention in a moment, Sean Gerety comments about another historical case, the Clark-Van Til debate in 1944, where the Presbyterian Guardian provided information on, and editorialized for, the Van Til side of the debate but information on the Clark side had to be obtained privately.

So can Presbyterians take their debates outside the meetings?  Clearly I think that they can, to some degree, since my own blogging sometimes crosses the line from news to commentary.  And I appreciate Dr. Richard Mouw’s historical perspective, comments, and opinion on why the Belhar Confession should not be adopted by the PC(USA).  There are numerous examples of other bloggers who contribute in this way.  There appears to be real value in the Web distributing information and opinion to a wider audience than could be reached using earlier techniques, like a chapel door or the party line in an official publication.

But having said that some branches have decided that wider and public debate at certain times and on certain topics is not appropriate.  For the 219th General Assembly the PC(USA) put out a document on Using Social Media At General Assembly.  The short answer in the document is “don’t during meetings,” except they phrased it like this “The guiding principle for using social media at a General Assembly is to be attentive and present to the community gathered immediately around us and to the mysterious and wondrous movement of the Spirit of Christ in this place.”  This addresses the use of social media only during the meeting.  At the 2009 Church of Scotland General Assembly they decided that the topic of ordination standards was such a hot topic that the Assembly approved a ban on discussing the topic in public, including the web, while a special commission does its work.  As far as I have seen, the silence on the topic has held very well.  (Update:  Please see the comments for some more on the PC(USA) policy and clarification of implementation and intent.)

So with that as perspective let’s look at the current specific case.  On the one hand it revolves around a larger issue in the PCA right now, the controversy over the Federal Vision Theology.  But on the other hand this case is dealing with it at the local level, specifically in the Siouxlands Presbytery, that I have written about before.

But the issue at the moment is not the Federal Vision argument itself but how the argument has been conducted.  A complaint has been filed with the presbytery by Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church, Minnetonka, MN, complaining that TE Brian Carpenter “caused great offense and harm to us as a church, as well as harm to the good name of our pastor…”  They go on to note the action filed with the presbytery and say:

However, in the context of the Presbytery alone, we were content for the matter to be heard and disposed of in the proper courts, being the called meeting of October 20, 2009, with Dr. Moon’s testimony of what we know to be his true beliefs.

Mr. Carpenter, however, was unwilling to allow the issue to remain within the confines of Presbytery and the appropriate courts. Instead, in actions that worked to prejudice Dr. Moon’s good name and reputation in the larger PCA and Reformed world, Mr. Carpenter wrote an inaccurate and unfair representation of Dr. Moon’s views on the Aquila Report, a public blog. Mr. Carpenter has every right to disagree with Presbytery, to think it wrong, and even (perhaps) to report the actions taken by our Presbytery. But his actions went beyond these to the point of ensuring Dr. Moon’s good name and reputation, as well as the name of our church, were damaged publicly, and in some ways irretrievably.

In another complaint Christ Church Mankato complained against TE Wes White

We, the Session of Christ Church, write to bring to your attention a matter of utmost concern to us.

On February 7, 2010 TE White began posting information on his blog that we believe to be injurious to TE Lawrence, Christ Church, and the Siouxlands Presbytery. On February 18, we contacted TE White privately and informed him of his fault (Matthew 18:15ff), requesting that he remove the posts, acknowledge his fault, and ask forgiveness of those he had wronged. TE White replied to us that his conscience was clear in the matter, and has not removed the posts nor sought forgiveness.

The blog posts we object to are as follows…

In the matter of the first complaint the investigating committee found a strong presumption of guilt but the presbytery chose instead to refer it back to the committee to provide specific instances with analysis of the error(s).  That blog post provides TE Carpenter’s response to the committee and defense of his position which includes issues of how his case was handled.  May help explain the alternate motion the presbytery adopted.  On his own blog he has a new post analyzing the requirements of the Book of Church Order and advocating for an open process in judicial proceedings.

Regarding his own case TE White tells us “The Administrative Committee of the Presbytery of the Siouxlands reviewed these materials and was unsure as to what the Session of Christ Church was asking.”  It sounds something like a judicial case on which no remedy can be applied.  The Administrative Committee recommended the presbytery refer it to decide what options are available.  The presbytery, again, chose a different course and passed a substitute motion to appoint a committee to conduct a BCO 31-2 investigation.  (The investigation to decide if charges can be filed and if so, what charges.)

So at this point we have two individuals for which specific charges are being considered related specifically to their blogging activities.  Christ Church closes their second letter with this request:

Since this is not the first time disputes have arisen over what someone has said about someone else or the Presbytery on the internet, we request that the Presbytery make its expectations clearly known.

This is what the PC(USA) and the Church of Scotland did with their actions.  You may not agree with the total ban in each case but at least they were clear.

Where does this leave us?  You may have your own thoughts on all this but here are a few that occur to me.

First, in these specific instances we will have to see where the judicial process leads.  There are specific charges to be brought, a presbytery level trial if the strong presumption of guilt is present and charges made.  And then there is the possibility of appeal.   Buckle up for the ride.

Second, it is tempting to make the distinction that you can blog about doctrine but not about people.  However, a bit of reflection and you realize that when the problem, perceived or real, is that another individual holds a view in error it is our responsibility to inform that person of their error.  What is more important here is how that happens.

Third, the larger problem here is that the problem, in the opinion of some people, was that the presbytery had erred.  Remember, we hold in tension the polity principle mentioned above “that a majority shall govern,” with the Westminster Confession of Faith (XXXI.iv) “All synods or councils… may err, and many have.”  How do we balance majority rule with the possibility of corporate error?  As Presbyterians we look to the review of higher governing bodies.  As the problem goes wider does that now make blogging to the wider audience acceptable?

Fourth, for good or ill the Internet and blogging are powerful tools for disseminating information and expressing opinions to a wide audience.  And it is not going away.  These cases show that the lines of what are and are not acceptable are not well defined and so we will need to find ways to live with it and behave in a Christian manner on it.  We could take the “no blogging” approach, the “blog but no names” rule or “keep it abstract not concrete” to limit what could be construed as personal attacks.

As corollaries to all this let me suggest that we bloggers should be slow to compose and do it prayerfully.  When I began my first field mapping class the professor suggested to us that we should be as free with the eraser as the pencil.  And continuing with this theme, we need to be aware that with our fallen nature we will make mistakes and if we are at this long enough offend someone.  The facts may be in our favor but can we present them in such a way that, as they said of Robert Campbell, “he was without bitterness and never allowed public differences to interfere with private friendships.”

Let me conclude by saying that I am not passing judgment in these particular cases or even weighing in on the actions of anyone involved.  I have not been following it closely enough to have a well-formed opinion and I will rely on the full judicial process to investigate and adjudicate that.

So where are the lines?  Can we correct error in such a way as to preserve truth and make ecclesiastical discipline restorative, even on the web?  This issue will not go away so I look forward to others weighing in and governing bodies discerning where they wish to draw the lines.  Let us see what develops.

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 20th 21st 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.

Thoughts On Twitter And Its Theological And Ecclesiastical Implications

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“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.”
Blaise Pascal, (1623-1662) Lettres provinciales

OK, I’ll admit it, I am addicted to Twitter. (http://twitter.com)  That does not mean that I like it, only that I see its usefulness.

I started out thinking of it like this cartoon from last Sunday (http://bit.ly/4stuAs) and to some degree still do.

(Other humorous references to Twitter include God tweeting creation http://bit.ly/N2Hvp and the twitter/knitting ban http://bit.ly/21Vrqq)

I became addicted during the massive Station Fire and then was monitoring Twitter for the Sheep Fire. For up-to-date info it is great.

Another example is the coverage of the ordination examination for Lisa Larges at the San Francisco Presbytery #sfpby meeting last night.

Twitter provides a medium for distributed and mass reporting of developing news in real time as well as receiving it on mobile devices.

And that, for my purposes, is the real value of Twitter – that information and links about developing situations can be quickly distributed.

Professionally it is great for rapid notification about earthquakes. Now with three major earthquake sequences my feed has been very active.

What probably bugs me the most about Twitter is that the information then gets redistributed, or Re-Tweeted (RT) as they say in the medium.

RT’s serve a purpose because each RT spreads the important or interesting information to a new group of followers.

But when I am filtering a topic and a particularly popular post is RT’ed by a lot of people all the RT’s can quickly overwhelm the screen.

You end up with only a little signal in all the noise.  (My view of it.)

I have found it both impressive and frustrating the amount of information you can place in a carefully crafted 140 character message.

It is long enough to convey significant information, particularly if you include a link, but short enough to inhibit nuanced discussion.

More than once I have been frustrated that my Twitter comments have been misinterpreted because of the limits on fully developing an idea.

Sometimes 140 characters is just not enough- The ability to Tweet the essence of the Athanasian Creed being an exception http://bit.ly/YHibv

However, I can appreciate the value of widely broadcasting your ideas and the potential for immediate feedback.

In general, for serious theological discussions, I have trouble finding usefulness in exchanging information in 140 character packets.

But in the case of Twitter the medium has become the message, as Marshall McLuhan would say. It is the democratization of info distribution.

Anyone with an Internet connection can send news to anyone else in the world-no corporate news filter, only the 140 character limit.

(BTW-In case you missed it in the midst of the other two big anniversaries, the Internet also just turned 40 http://bit.ly/4aZunE)

So, in a connectional church, does this mass interconnectedness of individuals change the hierarchical connections of our institution?

We are carrying to the logical conclusion the shift we have seen in the PC(USA) for the last several decades-we find identity around ideas.

In the “modern era” we have organized and advocated around affinity groups, but not strictly governed around them.

The 17th synod proposal would change that.  http://bit.ly/ccHf1

(And of course the caveats: previous splits created such affinity governing bodies http://bit.ly/2zRIDI;

The PC(USA) already has language non-geographic presbyteries, a form of affinity group;

And some may argue that certain geographic presbyteries have a strong affinity nature to them already.)

It strikes me that the increase in affinity groups was helped by many technological advances in communications and travel, not just Twitter.

But in this shift we are not becoming congregational in nature, although demographers say the church in general is becoming individualistic.

Consider the PC(USA) list of Advocacy Groups http://bit.ly/2exeSq – Is that the direction governance in the PC(USA) is headed?

Churches in the mainline seem to have these groups – I’m not aware of other branches having this many groups.

(For differences in technology use by ethnic churches consider this article http://bit.ly/2O01Rl on web sites.)

Now I don’t attribute all this to Twitter, but it is the latest in the technologies that allow us to organize well on this granular scale.

I don’t know what this means for the future – friends tell me twitter is here to stay but they said that about usenet. http://bit.ly/3aixMt

But the trend of technology has been to empower the individual (blogs, self-publishing) and to facilitate social networking.

I can only believe that the trend to communicate, coordinate, and organize outside of our current connectional structure will continue.

So maybe the question is not “Are we connectional?” but “In what ways are we being connectional?” and how that impacts our governance.

Oh ya, in case you are interested I do tweet occasionally as ga_junkie. http://twitter.com/ga_junkie

And if you did not figure it out, each of the lines in this post is 140 characters or less and therefore can be tweeted.

About One In Ten Thousand Presbyterians A Presbyterian Blogger

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OK, I had a long commute home yesterday — an L.A. “get away Friday” and all that.  And as I was thinking about my quest for sources for perspectives on the General Assemblies or Synods of some of the smaller Presbyterian branches I began to wonder how many I should be looking for.  I did a quick back of the envelope calculation and my conclusion is:

Roughly one in every 10,000 Presbyterians blogs on Presbyterian matters.

Beyond this it also appears that there are about the same number of institutional blogs from churches, governing bodies, or affiliated organizations.

Now this is a rough estimate and not very scientific.  If you want evidence of that I rushed to Wikipedia for the membership numbers.

And if you want to do this scientifically you would have to decide matters such as:  Does BRC get counted one, two, or three times?  Does a church or organization blog get counted as institutional if it is predominantly written by one individual?  Does an institutional blog count if it is mostly just news and not reflection?

So here is my initial back-of-the-envelope calculation.  The PC(USA) lists 2.2 million members.  Presbyterian Bloggers lists 144 “Members of our Community.”  Beyond that I have about 42 more blogs on my feed reader not in their list.  That brings the total to 186.  Knowing that there are several more blogs that I don’t follow it strikes me that a number in the 225 to 250 range is probably about right.  Hey, I said this was back of the envelope.  It’s got to be close to an order of magnitude.  So 220 blogs for 2.2 million members is one for every 10,000.

How does this hold up in other branches?  A quick check of the OPC gives a membership of about 29.000 and I can identify three individual and three church blogs.  I’m probably missing a couple individuals so it is a bit better than the 1:10,000, but still order of magnitude close.  How about the PCA?  Membership – 346,000.  I can identify 41 blogs by individuals and I’m probably missing a few, but it still appears closer to 1:10,000 than 2:10,000.  The ARP?  It looks like 30,000 members and three individuals blogging as well as three churches.  For the EPC they are listed as having 85,000 members and I read the blogs of four individuals.  A search only turned up a couple more so this appears to be a case where the estimate is ballpark but over estimates.  Or I need to look harder.

Moving outside the US the numbers, or my ability to find the blogs, drop off.  For instance, for the Presbyterian Church in Canada I can only find a couple of blogs by individuals for a church of 120,000 members.  Again, for the Presbyterian Church in Ireland I can again only find a couple of blogs for a church of 300,000.  I don’t think I am missing the other 28 if the ratio holds.  For the Church of Scotland I follow 18 and there are probably a few more, but still for a church of 500,000 it still seems short of the 50 expected blogs.

So does this serve a purpose?  For me as a researcher it does.  Coming from the field of seismology we have several empirical mathematical relationships that tell us how many earthquakes to expect in particular situations.  We use them for calculating earthquake hazard and seeing if we are “short” of earthquakes and so should expect the earth to catch up.  In this case I now have an empirical relationship that tells me about how many bloggers to expect in a denomination.  If I’m short, as in the EPC, maybe I should be checking around for a few more that I am missing.  If I’m on the number, like the ARP, I’ll keep my eyes open for more, but won’t put excessive effort into “finding the one lost blogger.”  And for social scientists and “new media” people out there maybe this tells you something.  And hey, if I messed something up here I’m sure you’ll let me know.

Thoughts from the mind of a research scientist.  Your mileage may vary.

Communications And Connectionalism — Implications Of A “Real-Time Church”

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I am easily distracted…  I intended to spend my lunch hour working on one of my saved drafts but that will have to wait.

In reading through some blogs over my morning coffee (I’m still trying to figure out why the Reformers didn’t make “coffee prayerfully consumed” or something like that the fourth note of the True Church) I came across a very interesting article that got me thinking about a whole host of things, but for my purposes here the “real-time governing body.”

The article is an essay from the Armed Forces Journal by P.W. Singer titled “The Rise of the Tactical General.”  The essay is about robotic warfare and how modern electronic communications brings the battlefield back to the commanders behind the front line.  It touches on the implications of robotic warfare:

But like any major change in war, the robot revolution is not turning
out to be the frictionless triumph of technology that some would
describe it. Unmanned systems are raising all sorts of questions about
not only what is possible but also what is proper in politics, ethics,
law and other fields.

It touches on leadership development:

Even more, we have to ponder the long-term consequences. What happens
when the young officers now being cut out of the chain, or micromanaged
in the midst of battle, advance up the ranks, but without the
experience of making the tough calls?

And there was a quote that really gave me pause that talked about the units controlling UAV’s (unmanned aerial vehicles) in Iraq from here in the States having a higher incidence of combat stress and post-traumatic stress disorder than some units deployed to Iraq.

If you are interested in either of these issues from a religious context you might want to have a look at the full article.  It is a quick read but might start you thinking.

Now, what got my attention, especially after watching GA webcasts and following tweets for the last couple of weeks, was this paragraph:

The ripple effects of robotics on leadership even affect the strategic
level. Many have discussed the idea of “strategic corporals,” younger
and younger troops who are being given greater and greater power and
responsibility. But the rise of robots has created an opposite
phenomenon — a dirty little secret that people in the service are
somewhat afraid to talk about for risk of their own careers. I call it
the rise of the tactical generals. Our technologies are making it easy,
perhaps too easy, for leaders at the highest level of command not only
to peer into, but even to take control of, the lowest-level operations.
One four-star general, for example, talked about how he once spent a
full two hours watching drone footage of an enemy target. He then
personally decided what size bomb to drop on it. Similarly, a special
operations forces captain talked about how a one-star, watching a raid
on a terrorist hideout via a Predator, radioed in to tell him where to
move not merely his unit in the midst of battle, but where to position
an individual soldier.

OK, follow me here through a hyper-space jump back to the church.  Read this line again from the context of the church institution:

Our technologies are making it easy,
perhaps too easy, for leaders at the highest level of command not only
to peer into, but even to take control of, the lowest-level operations.

Now I know that the Church here on earth is sometimes referred to as the Church Militant.  And one denomination has even organized themselves into an “army.”  But even though some would argue that there are those at the “highest level” who are trying to control the lowest-level operations that is not quite my focus today.  Heaven knows that as a synod moderator I only have the power the body gives me to run the meeting.

Instead I ask what are the ways that simply viewing the operations of the church in real-time help and hurt our connectionalism and polity?

There must be something because both the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and the Church of Scotland turned off their webcast and Twitter updates when they went into judicial session.  (Yes, the primary reason is that judicial proceedings in the UK are not broadcast and the church judicial sessions follow that pattern as well.)

Clearly I am one for real-time observations as I try to catch as many webcasts as my schedule allows, follow the GA’s that have Twitter tweets, have been know to live-blog GA sessions, and have a Google alert for “General Assembly.”  (The Google alert produces mostly political news articles and not Presbyterian ones in case you are wondering.)

What are the benefits of this instantaneous information?  One is that is allows the virtual observers to carry on an educated discussion while the information is still fresh in our minds.  I think that the result is a greater interest in the Assembly and its work.  I also believe that doing it in real time has more people seriously thinking about the issues as they follow the commissioners and in some ways try to think their thoughts.  Getting the information about the Assembly a week or three later would probably result in most reading it and thinking “that is interesting” but not thinking it through as fully and almost certainly not engaging in the online discussion at that time.  And for us bloggers it gives a second set of eyes and helping us get things right when we say one thing on line and someone comes back with “I don’t think so, I understood it this way.”

Another benefit gained from the viewing of the GA is the ability to see the whole meeting.  This allows someone to follow business of interest to them.  Other wise at best they get the news through the filter of another source and at worse may not get any substantial information at all if they are interested in business that would not make it into reporting sources.

So the primary benefit as I think about it is to those outside the body, raising interest and provoking fuller thought about the Assembly business.  And clearly it helps make the process more transparent if anyone can look in on the proceedings.  Let me know if you see other benefits of sharing GA’s over the web.

Is there a downside to the real-time sharing of the Assembly business?

I would argue that if the commissioners to an Assembly are also watching or participating in the real-time virtual discussion it does impinge on a basic premise of Presbyterian polity.  Our governing bodies are deliberative bodies and the members of that body have been chosen by God through the voice of the people to seek together God’s will.  When the body is not in session it seems perfectly appropriate for commissioners to educate themselves on issues from a variety of sources.  But we believe that something special happens when the body gathers as a court of the church and they deliberate together.  It would seem then that, besides the problem of distraction from the discussion, that outside voices would not be appropriate at that time especially if only a few of the commissioners were in on the virtual discussion.  Or from another perspective, the virtual observers are at a disadvantage because they were not able to view the committee meetings for those Assemblies that first break the commissioners up into committees.

And I have not decided if another issue could be a positive as well as a negative, but it is the issue of the “observer effect.”  As a concept in science it considers whether the observation or measurement of something influences that object or field.  In this case, does the observation of a governing body affect the functioning of the body?  Does the fact that you are being webcast as you make a comment at the microphone influence how you make the comment or whether you make the comment?  Does the fact that there are observers and media in the back of the room watching your committee meeting change the dynamic of the functioning of the committee?  As I said, I am a bit undecided on this factor and am still weighing the benefits and drawbacks.

So that is my initial thinking on this.  At the moment I think that the benefits of transparency and real-time interaction outweigh the issues of impairing the functioning of the body.  So as I Twitter this coming week and watch the webcast the next week I’ll keep this in the back of my mind and try to refine my thoughts.  Your mileage may vary.

Presbyterians Amid Web 2.0 — The Institution And The Web

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As I put the list of resources together earlier today and then followed the progress of the Church of Scotland GA on the webcast and on twitter (#ga2009) it struck me that different Presbyterian branches seem to follow very different paths in putting together their web presence.

While the Church of Scotland has been delivering the GA materials over the web for a number of years, has had their audio updates available on-line, and was an early adopter of webcasting the assembly, the official presence is still very much web 1.0.  There is one web site, and although they have a great extranet area with a lot of publicly available documents, everything is in a fairly typical web format.  And while the Moderator’s “blog” is nice, from a technical standpoint it is still one-dimensional being just a web page without RSS feed or comments.  Got to give them credit for the new twitter feed this year though, but at last fall’s National Youth Assembly the twitter feed was one of the top trending feeds.

The Presbyterian branch that really thought this through is the Presbyterian Church in Canada.  They have “branded” the denomination with PCConnect which contains various blogs, podcast, and PCConnect-TV weekly segment, all with a unified look and feel.

You have to give the PC(USA) credit for trying Web 2.0 out.  There are multiple official blogs from various leaders in the denomination, great on-line video segments about important issues, and Facebook pages.  But while all of this is great I have trouble finding a unified strategy, message, or feel in it.

Having said that it is only fair to say that the Church of Scotland and the PC(USA) are revising their web sites.  It will be interesting to see how much they integrate, unify, or at least brand the content, and introduce new Web 2.0 content.

(I probably should define Web 2.0.  There is not a completely agreed upon definition that I am aware of, but it is a web presence that is interactive in the sense that there are RSS feeds, comment sections, and individual publishing like blogs, twitter or Facebook.  The traditional static, or at least slowly changing, web pages are thought of as Web 1.0.)

But while following the CofS GA today I was reading an older post by Chris Hoskins on his blog “What is Freedom?”  In that post, Church of Scotland and Social Media, he muses about what more the CofS could be doing on-line.  There is a nice comment on the post from CofS leader and techie Stewart Cutler who says:

At present the CofS doesn’t allow Councils to have their own sites. No
‘brands’ allowed. NYA isn’t allowed its own site. COSY isn’t allowed
it’s own site. That limits the ways in which people can interact
because the CofS doesn’t understand that people don’t want to interact
with static, out of date websites. They want to discuss, share, link,
download, upload and all that web2.0 stuff.

So how do you solve the tension between central oversight to maintain uniformity in appearance, presentation and message, versus a more independent approach where lots of stuff gets out there and you need to figure out what is official and what is individual.  The PC Canada does the former well, the PC(USA) does the latter well.  It seems the CofS is trying to figure it out.

Christmas is now over, what next? — Reflecting on the Twelve Days of Christmas

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Christmas Day is past.  All of my preparations, reflection, travel, hosting, worrying, church-hopping, family time, and a multitude of other things, focused on that one day out of the year, have met their deadline, ready or not.  Now what?

We are now in the “Twelve days of Christmas,”  the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany.  Usual notation seems to have Christmas as the first day, although I have seen cases where Epiphany is the twelfth day.

In the simplest sense, the Twelve Days of Christmas are just a part of the liturgical calendar — The days of Christmastide after Christmas and before we enter the season of Epiphany.

And yes, it has its own song (with a wild rendition on YouTube by the a capella group Straight No Chaser, although in my opinion a now removed version recorded about a decade ago was better done).  And Dave Walker has his vision of it over at CartoonChurch.com. 

I’m not suggesting that the materialistic chaos of the Christmas Day gift-giving and celebration be repeated another eleven days.  (Although there could be some wonderful ways of “sharing the Christmas season” with others that could happen during this time.)

But as a liturgical and devotional vehicle the days of Christmastide provide us a chance “clutch the baby Jesus” a few more days, as the preacher I heard the morning put it, and remind ourselves not to move on too quickly from this miraculous event where we celebrate God incarnate as a human being.  We need time for it to sink in that it is Emmanuel, “God with us.”

But this year the twelve days of Christmas seem more important to me than in the past.  It is probably the way in which the realities of this broken world have really intruded into my holiday season. 

Within my own family my father-in-law was hospitalized with pneumonia the second day after Christmas.  And while he is still in the hospital and making progress against this setback, this is only a piece in a larger set of health challenges that have permanently affected his lifestyle.

But it is also interesting how this year I am more aware of other peoples’ health challenges out there in the “Church Virtual,” the collection of brothers and sisters in Christ that I know mostly, if not entirely, in the on-line community.  I would especially lift up for prayer the Rev. David Wayne, AKA JollyBlogger, who was diagnosed with cancer just before Christmas and spent Christmas Eve day in the OR.  While I only know David as a faithful medium-term reader of his blog, this is the power of the on-line world that we do become Christian Community with each other through this Web 2.0 stuff.  Praying for you David and rejoicing that you came home today.

And speaking of Web 2.0, I am becoming a fan of Facebook status updates as a way of building and maintaining Christian Community.  (Twitter is a similar vehicle.)  Through this conduit I was aware of various challenges and obstacles that my friends encountered through the holiday season, and it quickly filled up my prayer list.  Again, even 134 character updates are a tool in the development and maintenance of covenant community.

So, I pray that you also may not pass over Christmas too quickly but continue to find ways of  “hanging onto” the season in these twelve days.

Reflections On The Church Virtual #2 — The True Preaching Of The Word Of God

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In the Scots Confession the first of the “notes of the true kirk” is:

the true preaching of the word of God, in which God has
revealed himself to us, as the writings of the prophets and apostles
declare;

In the last few days preaching has made the news at a level seldom seen here in the U.S. with the direct challenge to portions of the tax code governing religious organizations.  While I have some pretty strong opinions about that, I’m leaving those for another time and probably a different venue.  I’ve got plenty of other things to talk about in this space and there are going to be plenty of other people talking about them, including the Rev. Mark D. Roberts according to a “coming attractions” note.

But an article on the Christianity Today web site by Craig Brian Larson about the spiritual discipline of listening to sermons, as well as the sermon at my church yesterday, got me thinking about the Word preached in the context of the virtual covenant community.  Having started to write this post I can see that the topic is getting away from me and I will be putting a lot of my thoughts into one or more subsequent posts.

In my congregation we have been posting some of the sermons preached on Sunday mornings on our web site for almost three years now.  Doing this is a team effort between the audio crew that records and digitizes the service and I as the internet geek who cuts out the sermon, screens it, possibly edits, resamples and compresses it in multiple forms, and posts it while updating the web page and the RSS feed.  Please note that in the flow process I do screen the sermons.  I don’t screen for “quality” so that only our best messages go up.  In some respects we are an “all the news that fits in print” outlet; in fact you can even find one of mine up there.  What I screen for is the long list of technical issues, including recording quality, copyright issues, and “personal revelations.”  This last issue gets at the heart of one of the major points of discussion among the techies.

The technical crew is constantly discussing the on-line presence and at one end we say we would love to stream our services live every week.  While we are not technically ready to do that, there is the concern of what the preacher might say that would be sent out in real time.  This is not as much concern about controversial statements, like the endorsement of political candidates, but concern for personal examples and family illustrations that a pastor might feel comfortable sharing with a congregation that knows their family, but may not want to share with a virtual community that only knows their voice.  The discussion is whether we need to allow the pastor to preach their sermon, or whether we need to remind them that this is going out over to the big, wide, wonderful virtual world and they need to consider what they share.

While the vast majority of sermons need no content management, yesterday’s was the exception:  our pastor shared, as a wonderful part of the sermon, some extended family details that probably are best not distributed to the world at large.  It was a “you had to be there moment.”  The last time this specific issue came up the screening committee (my wife and I in conversation with the pastor) decided that it would be best not to post the sermon at all.  My initial notes from yesterday are that this sermon can be edited so the personal information is not included since it is a small enough piece of it that the sermon will hold together just fine without it.

So this gets to the tension of what gets put out over the internet.  Do we ask the pastors to self-censor and whatever they say will go on-line, or do we let the pastors deliver the sermon for those who are “in the house” and the words may or may not get to the virtual community?  Which is more appropriate to the “true preaching of the Word of God?”

For those who are in the PC(USA) remember this is what our Directory for Worship says:

W-1.4005a. The minister as pastor has certain responsibilities which are not subject to the authority of the session. In a particular service of worship the pastor is responsible for

(1) the selection of Scripture lessons to be read,
(2) the preparation and preaching of the sermon or exposition of the Word,
(3) the prayers offered on behalf of the people and those prepared for the use of the people in worship,
(4) the music to be sung,
(5) the use of drama, dance, and other art forms.

The pastor may confer with a worship committee in planning particular services of worship.

By forcing a preacher to adapt a sermon for the internet how much do we infringe on this right and responsibility?

To some degree this seems to get down to the “audience”: which covenant community, local or virtual, gets to be the primary one and which gets to “listen in?”  More on that in the next post.