Be like Bill? Be like Jesus.

These have been doing the rounds on Facebook in the last week, with a simple but clever take on social media etiquette. I couldn't think of anything clever to say, and we've just been looking at discipleship, so:
this is Jesus

be like Jesus.

to which a friend replied:

Amen to that.

Why angels preferred working in the first century

Sanctifying Facebook

The BBC reports on a 'sin free Facebook' (a title given by the Beeb, not by the site itself) set up in Brazil. Bad language and porn are banned, and 'Like' has become 'Amen'.

Spend any time on Facebook and you can see the attraction. Like the rest of human society, and the internet, it's a mixed bag, to put it kindly. If you don't want to be exposed to violence, sexual content etc. then it's the online equivalent of avoiding most TV channels after 9pm.

But I doubt I'll be joining when the English version appears. Why?
1. It looks a bit too insular. 'Facegloria' and 'Amen' will all tick boxes with certain churchy types, but will be completely lost on anyone who's not in the know. If the intent is to model a different sort of online community that focuses on what is good, true, honest, etc. then at least don't create a language barrier to those who aren't Christians. There may be hordes of people who'd love a FB alternative that isn't going to expose them or their children to distasteful stuff, but cloaking it in 'Kingdom language' will ensure that they never sign up. One of the intentions of Facegloria is to spread Gods word - so make it easy to hear.

2. If it ends up siphoning Christians away from Facebook into their own sanctified little world, thats a problem too. The early church met in the open air, in a place where everyone could see and hear them. We do nobody any favours by putting ourselves behind thick walls, whether made of medieval stone or computer code. Salt and light have to be mixed with food and darkness to do their job.

For many Christians, Facebook is actually a place where we live out our faith: mediating in arguments rather than escalating them, encouraging people rather than whining, putting out content which promotes truth, justice, love, generosity, respect etc. Bailing out on it actually shows a lack of confidence in God, who's capable of redeeming just about anything.

'It is not for all of us to set everyone right on everything': ABofC on tweeting and love

Very helpful and challenging piece by Justin Welby on conflict resolution and social media:

The subtleties we lose when we communicate electronically have to do with expression, with touch, with the face-to-face aspect of relationship. Social media does not show tears in the eye, a hand on the arm when saying something painful, body language that speaks of inner turmoil, deep distress – even gentle respect.  It is simply there – usually forever. 

...It is not for all of us to set everyone right on everything.  There’s a point at which we need to leave it to those who know people to speak to them personally and quietly – in spaces where the tone is subtle and full of love. That is how people can be put back together rather than torn apart and left lying around in electronic media space.

Love often says don’t tweet. Love often says don’t write. Love often says if you must rebuke, then do so in person and with touch

Social Media Guidlines

The sagacious Steve Tilley has written some social media guidelines for the Diocese of Bath and Wells. You can see the whole document here, but I didn't get much further than page 1:

The immediacy of social media is one of its benefits – we can respond quickly to questions, correct misunderstandings, give our perspective about a breaking story in the news media. Responding quickly doesn’t mean doing so without due consideration. 
Before posting always think: 
 Is this my story to share? 
 Would I want my mum to read this? 
 Would I want God to read this? 
 Would I want this on the front page of a newspaper? 

what are your social media rules of thumb?

update: if you ignore the headlines, and the picture of a severe looking vicar, media reporting has been fairly balanced: Telegraph, Independent

2-Faced Facebook

A Facebook day yesterday:

On the down side, a discussion on one page that passed on a misquote, and had the potential to get negative, but thankfully didn't.

On the massive up side, there's a really creative Facebook admin in Yeovil who's set up a range of sites. One, which is mainly for the clients of the main local social housing provider (Yarlington Chat), has had a number of 'live chats' with people from different backgrounds over the last couple of weeks. Zoe the Admin has set them all up, and last night it was my turn as a vicar. Everything from gay marriage (of course) to dog collars, baby funerals, creation, other faiths, safeguarding in the church, the Illuminati, street preachers, favourite bible quote, why I decided to become a vicar, and lots and lots more. Even better, all from people in and around the same place - not an abstract Twitter discussion between people from all over the place, but a community in conversation.

I was on there for about 90 minutes, and never was I more glad for those hours learning to touch type 20 years ago. I was really nervous before starting, but ended up in conversation with dozens and dozens of people, and it was really worthwhile. Partly for being able answer some of the questions, but more importantly for being able to hear what they were in the first place. The church has often been accused of answering questions nobody is asking, so it was great to be pitched into a situation where the real questions could be asked, and also not to be the only voice. At times it was like being in a crowded pub with 15 conversations happening at once. What seemed to be most important was not getting the answer right, but being someone who could be questioned without feeling awkward or stupid.

Someone recently commented to me that they didn't see what good could come out of Facebook. Based on last nights experience, I would say plenty. I know another vicar whose main means of engaging with the community is via Facebook, another who is planting a church on a new housing estate, where people join the local FB group before they move in, and so they know their neighbours even before they arrive, and the group really helps the community to form well. Used well, it's a great tool. One of the questions was about whether the church should be more involved in social media. On the basis of last night, I would have to say a big yes.

But.....

Churches simply building great websites, twitter feeds etc. is one thing. Jesus sends his followers two by two into the surrounding villages with nothing, and told them to depend on the hospitality of strangers. Where they were welcomed, share the message. Last night felt like one of those - I wasn't on 'home turf', somewhere safe, launching out the gospel grenades from behind a safe wall. I had no idea what was coming, and just had to trust in God, the hospitality of Zoe the Admin, and my typing skills. 37 questions and 180 comments (ish) later, it felt like holy ground.

update: from a comment below by Zoe the Admin, which says it better than I can: All the feedback I received was great... people who had long given up any faith were contemplating coming back and this was not due to an epiphany, but down to one man who approached people in a way they could relate to.. Too often the church can be seen as daunting and unapproachable and when questions are raised, they have nowhere to turn. .... Face book does have it's draw backs, of that there is no doubt, but it also gives those who think they are unimportant, a voice. I, for one, am very grateful for you giving up time last night to come on talk to us and showing the church is moving forward and reaching out to people in a very down to earth honest manner.

update 2: great reflections on Facebook from Tanya Marlow

The FOMO epidemic

This is really helpful:

  FOMO – it sounds like an ominous superbug, doesn’t it? Like MRSA or SARS. Well, the chances are it’s a bug that you have. 

Research by marketing strategist Dan Herman, who claims to have identified and named the phenomenon, shows that around 70% of adults experience FOMO: The Fear of Missing Out.

Psychologist Arnie Kozak explains that ‘FOMO happens when we invalidate the experience we are having because we’re obsessed with the ones we’re not having’. Handled positively FOMO can motivate us to seize opportunities and be open to connections with new people. However, managed badly, FOMO cripples our ability to be fully present because we always have one eye elsewhere, on what could have been or might be instead.

FOMO can manifest itself in the small decisions of life (I should have said yes to that weekend away, they look like they’re having a great time) and larger life choices (I probably won’t stay with this company/church/partner long, I’ll keep my eye out for a better option). Whether it leads to anxious feelings of inferiority in which we feel depressed about our perceived social isolation, or a frantic, restless lifestyle that feels obliged to say ‘Yes’ to everything (even if we don’t really want to go), both are borne out of a desire to be all places at all times.

A symptom of living in a world in which we have increased choice, FOMO is made all the more acute by the use of social media...... 

read the rest here. 

I wonder how this affects out ability to worship, to engage with scripture, to engage with community? Can we fully worship God if we are not 'fully present'? Can you have a proper and deep conversation/relationship with someone whose mobile phone is always switched on? Can I meditate richly on scripture if part of me is wondering whether I should be doing something else?

#prayforTwitter

Here's a report from the Christian New Media Conference at the weekend: a snippet - 

Social media consultant Bryony Taylor shed some light on how the Twitter hash tag #prayForMuamba sparked prayer across the nation for footballer Fabrice Muamba who collapsed during a game earlier this year.

She said: "Twitter seems to have broken a barrier in talking about praying. ‘Pray For Muamaba’ was not the only hash tag with the word ‘pray’ in it . There was a ‘pray for Japan’ hash tag last year after the earthquake. It seems to me that it’s become a copied phrase, a normal response to a crisis on Twitter."

Between March 17 and 19 there were over 600,000 tweets with the hash tag ‘Pray for Muamba’ in it. Among those were tweets from Steven Gerrard and Wayne Rooney.

News publications are also picking up on trends sweeping across social networking sites. Earlier this year, the prayer tweets for Fabrice Muamba made the front page of The Sun with the headline ‘God is in control’.

"People pray, everyone prays. As it says in Ecclesiastes. God has placed eternity in the hearts of men. We have that longing for God in us," Taylor continued.

"People are looking for God and people are willing to say so on platforms like Twitter. Although we’ve seen this year some evidence of violent bullying on Twitter, the big story should be this one about Muamba."

Which makes me wonder how many people are doers of the word, and how many are merely tweeters. It was amazing to see the #prayforMuamba tag take off, and to see those prayers answered. Despite being a fairly regular tweeter, I'm still not entirely sure about it as a medium - it's hard to have any kind of nuanced conversation there, and it's easy to feel that, by retweeting a charity appeal, you've somehow 'done your bit', when all I've done is poked my keyboard. 

With so much communication going on, and both good and harm being done, I wonder how many folk actually pray for the Twittersphere itself?

Guidelines for Social Networking

One of the issues of managing your own time is that there aren't 'company' policies or procedures to guide/police what I do. Particularly with blogging and tweeting, I struggle to work out the optimum amount of time, usually swinging between too much and none at all.

Tim Chester has produced some guidlines for use of social media. Some of them are about time use, some of them are about character and values:

Twelve Guidelines for Social Networking

1. Don’t say anything online that you wouldn’t say were the people concerned in the room.

2. Don’t say anything online that you wouldn’t share publicly with your Christian community.

3. Ensure your online world is visible to your offline Christian community.

4. Challenge one another if you think someone’s online self reflects a self-created identity rather than identity in Christ.

5. Challenge one another if you think someone’s online self doesn’t match their offline self.

6. Use social networking to enhance real world relationship not to replace them.

7. Don’t let children have unsupervised internet access or accept as online friends people you don’t know offline.

8. Set limits to the time you spend online and ask someone to hold you accountable to these.

9. Set aside a day a week as a technology “Sabbath” or “fast”.

10. Avoid alerts (emails, tweets, texts and so on) that interrupt other activities especially reading, praying, worshipping and relating.

11. Ban mobiles from the meal table and the bedroom.

12. Look for opportunities to replace disembodied (online or phone) communication with embodied (face-to-face) communication.

what do you think? Is there anything else you'd add? Is there another set of guidelines you use?

Shock Decline in Liturgists Spells Disaster for Church of England

An email today from LinkedIn, the social networking site, reports a 3% decline in those who have the 'skill' of 'Liturgy'. There are various explanations:

1. At the cutting edge of social networking and new media, liturgists are deserting LinkedIn for sites that are more hip and with it.

2. Through the regular practice of liturgical prayer, liturgists are becoming more humble, and so less likely to report that they have a particular 'skill'.

3. 3% of those who reported they have the skill of 'liturgy' have been rumbled by other LinkedIn users who have been to one of their services.

4. Bosco Peters campaign for world domination.

5. The staff of St. Pauls removing themselves en masse from LinkedIn to avoid getting rude messages from Occupy London Stock Exchange (now rebranded to Occupy London in 2011's Golden Globe winner for mission creep).

6. The staff of St. Pauls removing themselves en masse from LinkedIn so that people couldn't see how many contacts they had in Finance, Shares, Stock Market, Hedge Funds, Gambling With Other People's Money,  and Ha Ha Ha You Should See My Bonus.

7. 3% of Liturgists being removed from claiming Liturgy as a skill following reassesment by a government expert.

8. 3% of Liturgists being removed from active ministry following capability proceedings by CofE parishioners, who realised that simply being a vicar doesn't make you a gifted worship leader.

9. A new year purge of web use by people like me who joined LinkedIn because everyone was talking about it, still haven't worked out how to use it, and needed to cut down on the number of email updates they were getting.

10. A rise in the unemployment rate among liturgists, mirroring that in the general population, without the private sector having created enough liturgical posts to offset austerity measures in public worship.

11. The entire newsroom of a UK broadsheet adding 'Liturgy' as a skill, then removing it, thus creating an artificial fall in the headline numbers, and the opportunity for a 'Church in terminal decline' headline. Like the one above - made you look, didn't it?

12. The death metal group Liturgy calling it a day in July 2011.

13. LinkedIn selling 3% of its database to Mark Driscoll, in return for information about the number of UK based bible teachers, and how many connections they have.

14. A global resurgence in etymology: since 'liturgy' means 'work of the people', it's actually nonsense to put it down as a skill.

15. Having made contact with fellow liturgists, a growing number of liturgists realise that there are more fun/interesting/(fill in your own) people to be connected with on LinkedIn, so they delete it as a skill to avoid more long debates about use of the Book of Common Prayer in 1880s East Anglia.

16. Archdruid Eileen and her multiple alter egos have left LinkedIn.

I reckon it's probably an equal number of each. By the way, if you are one of the 2,627 skilled liturgists on LinkedIn, please do add a comment. As long as it's not about the BCP. As opposed to the other BCP.

What Did We Used to Do Before Social Media?

Saw this graphic on BigBible. If we had this much time, information, creativity and computer power to allocate as we pleased, without preconditions, is this what we'd want to allocate it to? Anyway, on with the blog....
(apologies for the size, Blogger doesn't seem to want to let me make it any bigger. Never mind, not having to read all that small print will save you valuable time)