Virtual church
26/07/14 04:44
Last evening, Susan turned her laptop around to show me a really nice picture of a trio of girls from our church paddling an inflatable boat on a small pond. I couldn’t resist making a comment. I love boats. I love kids. Kids in boats in a safe setting is a recipe for good memories and pleasant times. In my comment, I included Ratty’s words to Mole in Wind in the Willows: “There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”
The thing about my comment, however, is that because the computer was open to Susan’s Facebook page, it thought it was Susan making the comment. In this particular case, there is no harm. The person who posted the picture knows both of us and I put a little note in my comment to identify myself. It was clear, however, how easy it would be to enter a conversation in that media under a false identity.
I’ve never gotten into Facebook that much. I do have an account and I look at it from time to time because I have some nieces and nephews that use it as a primary way of communicating and I am interested in their lives. The church has a page and I have an automated program that will make a post to the church’s Facebook, Twitter, and other social media accounts all in one simple process. Since I post to Facebook more often than I look at it, some people think that it is the best way to contact me and it is not unusual for me to miss a message posted in that forum.
One of the problems with Facebook is that there are several things you can do in that forum that automatically send messages to everyone on your friends list. So my newsfeed is cluttered with invitations to play Jackpot Slot Machines and Words of Wonder and Criminal Case and Pet Rescue Saga. I guess that might tell you what kind of friends I have. I would say that for the most part my Facebook friends are a very eclectic group. Some are relatives, others are acquaintances from other parts of my life. Still others are more friends of friends. I resist accepting invitations to be friends from people that I have never met face to face, but the church site is set up to be as welcoming of guests and strangers as is the actual church, so there are a lot of people I have never met who participate in that group.
I guess I prefer spending time with my real friends in face-to-face activities. And I prefer going to church and worshiping with other living persons as opposed to virtual church. There is a lot of virtual church going on.
I have been told that our denomination, The United Church of Christ, has more Facebook friends than it has actual members in the pews. I haven’t checked to see if this is true, but if it is it says something about people’s preferences for religion that requires very little commitment.
I recently spoke (face-to-face nonetheless) with a person who belongs to a virtual church. The online congregation has connections to a physical congregation in Nebraska, but the member joined it when it came out of Oregon. The virtual church has online worship with a regular schedule like a physical church, counseling, and other services. It also receives donations and has stewardship drives. It has a paid pastor though I was unclear whether the pastor’s sole income comes from Internet church or if it was a position shared between the Internet church and the physical church.
There is an article on the BBC website about the Kiev cathedral in the Ukraine that has a phone app for Orthodox Christian Ukrainians in search of spiritual guidance. The app, which is officially endorsed by the Svyato-Troyitskyy Cathedral, allows users to “enter a virtual church to pray, seek inner peace and ask a priest for advice.” I couldn’t help but thinking of my making a comment in my wife’s name on Facebook as I read the article. It would be tough to be the priest who gives advice on the phone app. You’d not only be giving advice to strangers - a risky and problematic practice in the first place - but also giving advice to people who may or may not be who they say they are.
I can see the benefits of some of the technology and social media. I am in favor of things that make connections between people. I like to see our members conversing outside of the church walls. And I try to participate in those conversations in a meaningful manner.
But I think that I will never quite catch up with the technology. I’ll never be as at home with my smartphone as is my nephew. I’ll never find making comments on Facebook as easy as having a conversation with a person over a cup of coffee in our church fellowship hall. And I don’t think I’m cut out to be the pastor of a virtual church. Then again, perhaps a virtual church could have a virtual pastor. What if the very intelligent people who created the church app for the Kiev Cathedral were to come up with the right set of logarithms to automate the advice giving? With all of the possibilities of giving ill-informed or wrong-directed advice that exist, it seems that a good computer program might give good advice at least as often as an actual person. Think of the time that would be saved if we automated the process.
From there it is a really short step to using virtual intelligence to craft sermons and once the computer is generating the sermons you might as well create a robot to deliver them. We could set up vending machines in public places to distribute communion and fountains for virtual baptism.
For now, however, I guess I’ll write my blogs the old fashioned way. And yes, I really do write them all. No ghost writers or computer-generated lists of topics.
The thing about my comment, however, is that because the computer was open to Susan’s Facebook page, it thought it was Susan making the comment. In this particular case, there is no harm. The person who posted the picture knows both of us and I put a little note in my comment to identify myself. It was clear, however, how easy it would be to enter a conversation in that media under a false identity.
I’ve never gotten into Facebook that much. I do have an account and I look at it from time to time because I have some nieces and nephews that use it as a primary way of communicating and I am interested in their lives. The church has a page and I have an automated program that will make a post to the church’s Facebook, Twitter, and other social media accounts all in one simple process. Since I post to Facebook more often than I look at it, some people think that it is the best way to contact me and it is not unusual for me to miss a message posted in that forum.
One of the problems with Facebook is that there are several things you can do in that forum that automatically send messages to everyone on your friends list. So my newsfeed is cluttered with invitations to play Jackpot Slot Machines and Words of Wonder and Criminal Case and Pet Rescue Saga. I guess that might tell you what kind of friends I have. I would say that for the most part my Facebook friends are a very eclectic group. Some are relatives, others are acquaintances from other parts of my life. Still others are more friends of friends. I resist accepting invitations to be friends from people that I have never met face to face, but the church site is set up to be as welcoming of guests and strangers as is the actual church, so there are a lot of people I have never met who participate in that group.
I guess I prefer spending time with my real friends in face-to-face activities. And I prefer going to church and worshiping with other living persons as opposed to virtual church. There is a lot of virtual church going on.
I have been told that our denomination, The United Church of Christ, has more Facebook friends than it has actual members in the pews. I haven’t checked to see if this is true, but if it is it says something about people’s preferences for religion that requires very little commitment.
I recently spoke (face-to-face nonetheless) with a person who belongs to a virtual church. The online congregation has connections to a physical congregation in Nebraska, but the member joined it when it came out of Oregon. The virtual church has online worship with a regular schedule like a physical church, counseling, and other services. It also receives donations and has stewardship drives. It has a paid pastor though I was unclear whether the pastor’s sole income comes from Internet church or if it was a position shared between the Internet church and the physical church.
There is an article on the BBC website about the Kiev cathedral in the Ukraine that has a phone app for Orthodox Christian Ukrainians in search of spiritual guidance. The app, which is officially endorsed by the Svyato-Troyitskyy Cathedral, allows users to “enter a virtual church to pray, seek inner peace and ask a priest for advice.” I couldn’t help but thinking of my making a comment in my wife’s name on Facebook as I read the article. It would be tough to be the priest who gives advice on the phone app. You’d not only be giving advice to strangers - a risky and problematic practice in the first place - but also giving advice to people who may or may not be who they say they are.
I can see the benefits of some of the technology and social media. I am in favor of things that make connections between people. I like to see our members conversing outside of the church walls. And I try to participate in those conversations in a meaningful manner.
But I think that I will never quite catch up with the technology. I’ll never be as at home with my smartphone as is my nephew. I’ll never find making comments on Facebook as easy as having a conversation with a person over a cup of coffee in our church fellowship hall. And I don’t think I’m cut out to be the pastor of a virtual church. Then again, perhaps a virtual church could have a virtual pastor. What if the very intelligent people who created the church app for the Kiev Cathedral were to come up with the right set of logarithms to automate the advice giving? With all of the possibilities of giving ill-informed or wrong-directed advice that exist, it seems that a good computer program might give good advice at least as often as an actual person. Think of the time that would be saved if we automated the process.
From there it is a really short step to using virtual intelligence to craft sermons and once the computer is generating the sermons you might as well create a robot to deliver them. We could set up vending machines in public places to distribute communion and fountains for virtual baptism.
For now, however, I guess I’ll write my blogs the old fashioned way. And yes, I really do write them all. No ghost writers or computer-generated lists of topics.