Friday, March 30, 2007
Networking - Excellent! But...
Monday Morning Insight is wondering about the use of social networking Internet tools in the church. This immediately set me in mind of an interview Hugh Hewitt did with John Mark Reynolds and David Allen White on the increase in net technology. I thought the key exchange in the Hewitt interview was this:
Jesus ministry was to, in part, change the focus of His people, formerly the Jews and now the church, from informing, teaching and preaching, to forming, mentoring and discipling. The Word became flesh.
There is indeed a need for information management in the church, and all this new technology is wonderful for that. But it cannot in any way change the fundamental mission of the church, nor can it substitute for the hard, fleshy, personal work of transforming people's lives.
How should a church use technology? That depends very much on the church. If the church is active, forming, mentoring and discipling, then I think that church can embrace the technolgy and use it as the tool it is intended to be. But if your church is not doing those things, then the technology will just be another way to avoid them.
Related Tags: church, social networking technology, forming, mentoring, discipling
DAW: Well, Hugh, my sincere hope is that one day, we all have to make that choice that Ulysses makes. Let me give you White’s crackpot theory. I’ve been putting out this crackpot theory for a long while, everybody thinks I’m nuts, but with each passing day, I believe it more and more. And it’s simply this. We, as a society, as a world, have become totally dependent on these machines. From the refrigerators to the computers to the televisions to the microwaves, you name it, and it all depends on one thing, and that is electricity. And I am absolutely convinced the day is coming soon, how I couldn’t tell you, when I couldn’t tell you, the power’s going out. And when the power goes out, we’ll then find out what is in people, and how they are able to deal as human beings in a simple world, when all the toys and gadgets are taken away. I’m uneasy, but I think in terms of basic survival, it’ll be a grand time, and farming will be essential if people are going to eat, and we’ll get back to the basics.In the end, both David and John Mark have a point here. I agree with John Mark, technology is technology, it is to be feared and/or embraced - people make it bad or people make it good. But I also agree with David, people are formed by how they communicate and with whom they communicate. My bottom line is this, using the Internet, we have figured out how to inform, but not to form. Using the internet we can teach, but we cannot mentor, we can preach, but we cannot disciple.
HH: Well, Frank Gaffney calls it the Electro-Magnetic Pulse. It’s the EMP weapon, so you should consult with him. He’s worried about it, too, David. Now…but put that aside. I want to get to the other one, which is given that the seven deadly sins…my friend once told me that the Devil arranged for the collapse of the Berlin Wall, because he was doing better on our side. And given that all of the seven deadly sins are certainly accelerated on the internet, and I mean them all, doesn’t that necessarily mean, John Mark Reynolds, that more souls are in more peril than ever before?
JMR: More souls are in more peril than ever before, because more souls exist. But no, exactly the opposite is true, because anything is really good, because if it exists, it’s good. It can only be twisted by the Devil. So all this information, all this sea of creativity, is fundamentally, at the deepest level, a reflection of the image of God in people. And the Devil may twist it, he may break it, he may try to use it to corrupt us, but in the end, this fundamental crying out towards God, this fundamental cry of existence, will cause it to be a more positive thing in aggregate than a negative. You know what? People have been predicting the end of the world and the fall of the West based on technology for 150-200 years now. But I would rather be alive today, with the problems we have today, than in 1950, or in 1920. I’d rather be facing the problems we face, and they are great and mighty, than facing the problems that faced the United States in the 20’s and 50’s. Our best days are ahead of us, Hugh.
Jesus ministry was to, in part, change the focus of His people, formerly the Jews and now the church, from informing, teaching and preaching, to forming, mentoring and discipling. The Word became flesh.
There is indeed a need for information management in the church, and all this new technology is wonderful for that. But it cannot in any way change the fundamental mission of the church, nor can it substitute for the hard, fleshy, personal work of transforming people's lives.
How should a church use technology? That depends very much on the church. If the church is active, forming, mentoring and discipling, then I think that church can embrace the technolgy and use it as the tool it is intended to be. But if your church is not doing those things, then the technology will just be another way to avoid them.
Related Tags: church, social networking technology, forming, mentoring, discipling
