I’ve been in several conversations and meetings lately about technology, social-networking, blogs, and, well, PR. No, “PR” is probably not the best descriptor because these folks are interested not just in public perception, but in how they can best use existing technologies to connect people and ideas for the betterment of all — if that’s what PR is, my apologies. I love to think and talk about such things, but I’m also aware that my English and Religion degrees only go so far in equipping me for the conversation. Here’s what I’ve been thinking, though.

My generation is connected to each other in ways unseen twenty years ago. For example, Megan and I had coffee with some good friends a few weeks ago. It was a great hour and a half, and I look forward to getting together again soon. But I probably won’t see them for a few more weeks. Yesterday, though, I saw they uploaded pictures of a new dog and asked for name suggestions via a facebook status. I added my two cents and by doing so, checked in with them and shared in their fun news. Somehow, via a facebook interaction or two, our friendship is strengthened, or at least positively continued, through a few clicks on facebook. I could give plenty of other examples, or even list friends who I feel fairly close to and been conversing with for over a year, but who I met through the blog and have never met in person. After spending a year abroad and now returning to Decatur with some friends having moved away, I’m particularly aware of how technology has enhanced friendships in ways unavailable before.

Networks such as facebook, and facts like youth these days are spending more time online and less time watching TV, are changing our culture pretty darn quickly. Remember when PalmPilots were all the rage and tablet laptops were the next big thing? Remember when our children just hung out at friends’ houses rather than setting up “playdates?”

So I wonder how the church needs to change in such a world, and I wonder how Christians can best live into the web 2.0 world and beyond.

Sure there’s plenty of cautious questions to ask: are online encounters cutting down on in-person ones? How do we follow an incarnate savior in a virtual world? Are the tech gaps between generations alienating our most seasoned members? And many more.

I just signed up for Twitter (@ajc123) as I’m definitely of the “don’t knock it until you’ve tried it school of technology.” Day one is going fine after I figured out how to reply to people (they should put the shortcuts in the welcome email).

In seminary I’ll often hear stuff like, God’s great movements always begin on the margins of society or, be suspicious wherever there is empire for the resounding message of the Bible is against empire and for God’s subversive acts. So I wonder, is new technology the margins, the periphery, or just empire?

If it’s the margins, should we be starting up new church developments in Second Life? If it’s empire, should we even email?

I’m not sure, but I do know that the resistance I hear to much technological change sounds an awful lot like the resistance I hear to good and right changes in the church: but we’ve never done it that way before. The resistance sounds an awful lot like fear of change rather than excitement for new possibilities for living-out the gospel.

I’m not sure if I’ll like Twitter. I’m not sure how long I’ll blog. But I’ll end with a story I heard last week. A friend of mine was at a church service in Atlanta where she met a visitor. After welcoming the visitor, she asked how she heard about the congregation. The visitor said she was surfing the web angry about crappy old hymns and not wanting to have anything to do with the church. She googled and found my blog where she found the presbymergent.org link. She followed that and ended up visiting an emergent congregation in Atlanta.

I have no idea who this visitor was. Never met her. Probably never will. It goes to show, though, that Holy Spirit has no qualms about moving online. Maybe we shouldn’t either.

image by ilker