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Peace in Christ,
Taylor Burton-Edwards
Friday, September 18, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
ReBe Church: Real Listening
Companions,
Alan Roxburgh offers us an important twist on how we think about the use of technology, especially communication technology, in our lives and, indirectly, in worship.
You can read his recent piece, "The Chorus of Voices Screaming to Be Heard" here.
In it, Alan writes:
I thank God for long evenings, tables with great food and good wine, where we can be surprised by conversations, where voices can emerge that take us by surprise and move us to places that we could never imagine in the rush of our self imposed busyness. I love the neighborhood where I can sit down at a table on a front lawn and talk with people, amazed by them and their stories as we encounter one another in the ordinariness of an evening and conversation. Such pleasure in relationships and others far exceeds the superficiality of new technologies and social networking.
There's probably enough just there for a good conversation about the place of social networking in relationships, mission and worship.
But read the whole thing-- and let's see where it takes us.
Peace in Christ,
Taylor Burton-Edwards
Alan Roxburgh offers us an important twist on how we think about the use of technology, especially communication technology, in our lives and, indirectly, in worship.
You can read his recent piece, "The Chorus of Voices Screaming to Be Heard" here.
In it, Alan writes:
I thank God for long evenings, tables with great food and good wine, where we can be surprised by conversations, where voices can emerge that take us by surprise and move us to places that we could never imagine in the rush of our self imposed busyness. I love the neighborhood where I can sit down at a table on a front lawn and talk with people, amazed by them and their stories as we encounter one another in the ordinariness of an evening and conversation. Such pleasure in relationships and others far exceeds the superficiality of new technologies and social networking.
There's probably enough just there for a good conversation about the place of social networking in relationships, mission and worship.
But read the whole thing-- and let's see where it takes us.
Peace in Christ,
Taylor Burton-Edwards
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Comments and moderation
First, a shout-out to Jay Miklovic for raising a question we hadn't really dealt with here, but that probably at least I should have talked about long ago.
Why is comments moderation turned on?
There are two reasons for this. One is to avoid spam comments. And yes, we have gotten some. And some of those we get from time to time aren't exactly "Christian" in content-- I think you get the point.
The second is because of General Board of Discipleship web practices policies, which were developed in part in response to what became the destruction of the Worship Discussion Room on the GBOD worship website by spammers hawking drugs and posting not just links but pictures that were highly inappropriate. Putting it under captcha didn't stop that. The only thing that did was the exercise of comments moderation. But by that time that damage had been done. The Worship Discussion Room is dead.
So... GBOD web staff decided that if we're going to have staff involved in a public web presence, particularly on blogs, they need to be able to moderate what gets posted.
Now, the way I've got this set up, I'm notified instantly via email whenever someone sends in a post to the blog. And I'm on email much of the time-- either on my computer at work or home or via my phone. So in reality, there usually isn't (or generally wouldn't be) much of a time lag between when a comment is entered and when it's posted.
For Facebook groups we operate, that policy so far doesn't apply. I suppose the reasoning is that folks who sign up for Facebook groups are generally folks who have some relationship with us already, and so wouldn't likely post inappropriate things. And if they did one of us could easily yank it. Blogs, however, are potentially far more public and more "anonymous"-- so there's more caution there.
So... that's where we are for now.
But I'm absolutely open to discussing this further among ourselves here (comments moderated of course, but I only delete things that really aren't appropriate!) and, if it seems good to the group, to seeing what sort of "exception" or even "new rule" I might be able to work out on the GBOD side to allow comments moderation to be turned off.
Peace in Christ,
Taylor Burton-Edwards
Why is comments moderation turned on?
There are two reasons for this. One is to avoid spam comments. And yes, we have gotten some. And some of those we get from time to time aren't exactly "Christian" in content-- I think you get the point.
The second is because of General Board of Discipleship web practices policies, which were developed in part in response to what became the destruction of the Worship Discussion Room on the GBOD worship website by spammers hawking drugs and posting not just links but pictures that were highly inappropriate. Putting it under captcha didn't stop that. The only thing that did was the exercise of comments moderation. But by that time that damage had been done. The Worship Discussion Room is dead.
So... GBOD web staff decided that if we're going to have staff involved in a public web presence, particularly on blogs, they need to be able to moderate what gets posted.
Now, the way I've got this set up, I'm notified instantly via email whenever someone sends in a post to the blog. And I'm on email much of the time-- either on my computer at work or home or via my phone. So in reality, there usually isn't (or generally wouldn't be) much of a time lag between when a comment is entered and when it's posted.
For Facebook groups we operate, that policy so far doesn't apply. I suppose the reasoning is that folks who sign up for Facebook groups are generally folks who have some relationship with us already, and so wouldn't likely post inappropriate things. And if they did one of us could easily yank it. Blogs, however, are potentially far more public and more "anonymous"-- so there's more caution there.
So... that's where we are for now.
But I'm absolutely open to discussing this further among ourselves here (comments moderated of course, but I only delete things that really aren't appropriate!) and, if it seems good to the group, to seeing what sort of "exception" or even "new rule" I might be able to work out on the GBOD side to allow comments moderation to be turned off.
Peace in Christ,
Taylor Burton-Edwards
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
What gathers us? What gathers folks into Christian communities where you are?
Companions,
This from one of the Fresh Expressions pioneers doing missional church in the C of E in Devon, England...
http://www.sharetheguide.org/blog/archive/2009/08/10/worship-shaped-churches-get-real-and-get-over-them-by-david-muir
The key question he raises is "What gathers a particular body into a sense of membership with each other?" If it's just worship style, that body, as such, isn't likely to be terribly missional-- it'll just be too tiring. If it's just missional stuff, it may be less than enthusiastic about worship.
And... as the title asks... what gathers folks where you are?
Peace in Christ,
Taylor Burton-Edwards
This from one of the Fresh Expressions pioneers doing missional church in the C of E in Devon, England...
http://www.sharetheguide.org/blog/archive/2009/08/10/worship-shaped-churches-get-real-and-get-over-them-by-david-muir
The key question he raises is "What gathers a particular body into a sense of membership with each other?" If it's just worship style, that body, as such, isn't likely to be terribly missional-- it'll just be too tiring. If it's just missional stuff, it may be less than enthusiastic about worship.
That's his observation. What's yours?
And... as the title asks... what gathers folks where you are?
Peace in Christ,
Taylor Burton-Edwards
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