"Know thyself" Part 1

The Greek aphorism gnōthi seauton has been attributed to a number of ancient philosophers but regardless of authorship its call to introspection remains true: know yourself. Were it only so easy.It s not just individuals that must do this. Churches need to know themselves as well. They need to know what they believe and they need to know their history. I'll come back to beliefs in a later post.Churches have histories like people. Even in Canada, some churches go back 300 years. That's a lot of ministry. I remember rooting around in the basement of Emerson Baptist Church when I ministered there, the second oldest Baptist church in Western Canada. Like the show Ancestors in the Attic, exploring...

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The Word spoken...

I went to see Jim Carey's "A Christmas Carol" and was inspired to re-read the book. The movie seemed to be undecided whether it was to be a literal interpretation of the original Dickens story or something new (and Jim Carey-ish.) A good movie but not the same as the book. I've been thinking a lot about the debate between the print and new media in religion.The peoples of the Book (Muslims, Jewish and Christians) have an text centered faith rooted respectively in the Koran, Tanakh, and Christian Bible each sharing significant Torah traditions. I'm interested (at present) in my research with Christian protestant evangelicalism and its use of information. In this theological tradition, there is...

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Merry Christmas...intentionally!

I've wished a number of people Merry Christmas this week. I know that Season's Greetings or Happy Holidays is more culturally appropriate but I like Christmas and I want to wish people a Merry Christmas. I'm not trying to be counter-culture or deliberately provocative. Oddly enough no one has reacted negatively to my wish for a Merry Christmas; most returned the wish in kind; a few seemed pleasantly surprised. I recognize that some in my community won't be celebrating Christmas until January 7, 2010 , some will be celebrating Kwaanza, some have already celebrated Hanukkah, and others will commemorate Ashura. For many, it is a time to be with family and friends. I hope each enjoys their holiday.But...

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Signs and wonders....

No nothing apocalyptic just...well, signs. Church signs to be exact. Traditionally they were simply names: "St. Alban's Anglican Church" or "First Baptist Church" (and surprise...there are actually a few "Second Baptist Churches out there.) Perhaps the denominational affiliation is also there: "United Church of Canada" or "Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada (PAOC)." Now some will go as far as adding the pastor and service times (if the pastors change too often they might leave it off or just have a secondary sign screwed on - maybe good to watch out for if you are a new potential pastor being interviewed by the church.)Some church signs feature the "sentence sermons" as one writer called them;...

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Your Church's Digital Portfolio

I've been reading Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives. Palfrey and Gasser are both lawyers and of course are very interested in legal issues such as privacy and copyright. But this isn't a law book but in their words "the aim of the Digital Natives project is to understand and support young people as they grow up in a digital age."Two interesting concepts they develop are the ideas of your digital portfolio and your digital identity. Your digital identity is the identity you create online through your IM chats, facebook profile, your gaming activities etc. It is malleable; I can experiment with my online identity in different ways as easily as creating a new...

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Churches of Second Life...

OK, so I need a real vacation...but in the interim enjoy these vacation pics of a few of the churches I recently visited in SecondLife. These virtual churches were created with the intent that they would be used for online worship, mediation, and prayer. Some SecondLife churches are open for virtual weddings, funerals and rituals. Several of these churches offer Bible studies, fellowship and prayer. For the moment lets set aside the debate about the validity of virtual religious spaces. Take a few minutes are just look at the care and craftsmanship...

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Preachin' the Net

It was Marshall McLuhan who wrote that "the medium is the message." It is times like this that I realize I need to read more McLuhan (in my copious free time for sure!) I've been thinking again about preaching and the internet. There is an interactive relationship that needs to be explored; muse with me for a few moments....Let's go back to the Tuesday before. The preacher took Monday off and is now thinking about the next Sunday's message...hypothetically anyway. ;-) Most preachers I know use the internet as an information gathering tool. Email updates from missionaries or the denomination. Online sermon illustration collections and even Christian news and current events. Occasionally I am...

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I just had dust in my eye...

I recently attended a presentation by a researcher who works with young people who face significant life challenges as well as a lot of social stigma. For hers and these people's privacy I won't elaborate further except to say they are ordinary people with some very heart moving stories. This researcher is an extraordinary person; she has one of the largest hearts I know (the new Grinch has nothing on her!) It was hard for her at points to share these stories and not be moved by her recollections. She is not alone. I recently spoke with another qualitative researcher who also wrestled with very human responses to the stories that were shared with her. Retelling the stories brings those emotions...

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AAR...No pirates to be seen at Law and Religion

I noted earlier that there were lawyers at AAR as well (to be specific law professors.) Now before anyone makes any lawyers/pirates comparisons please know that many of my friends are lawyers! Scallywags some may be, but thieves and vagabonds they are not. ;-)The papers in Law, Religion and Culture session considered the Bouchard Taylor Commission, Aboriginal Rights, and Islamic Law in Canada. The first paper and the last caused me the most...well frustration. The Bouchard Taylor commission considered the issue of religious accommodation in Canadian life (how big an issue is the need to accommodate the religious views of minorities in canada.) Lori Beaman was very concerned with the report's...

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AAR...my candidate to walk the plank!

The AAR conference brings together a very diverse group of people. There are Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Pagans and Atheists. There are sociologist, theologians, anthropologists, and (surprise!) lawyers. Oh, and I even met an evolutionary psychologist. Some are regular practitioners of their faith; some are simply fascinated by the social expressions of religion. It is illuminating to interact with such a diverse group around various topics; it also requires a sensitivity to the faith positions of others. As an evangelical Christian I must be prepared to defend my faith, but I am also obligated to live at peace with those around me. I need to treat others with respect even when we disagree....

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AAR...Can pirates dance?

Religious rituals. There are the big rituals (coronations) and little rituals (like a family Bible reading.) Some are very tightly scripted; you don't have much leeway in a funeral or a remembrance service at a cenotaph. Other rituals are more open to interpretation; I have lots of room for innovation in a wedding ceremony like readings, music etc. as long as certain things occur like vows, pronouncement etc. I remember in my wedding the Minister forgot to say "you may kiss the Bride." Now I did eventually get to kiss her and I'll let you in on a secret: I kissed her before the wedding! ;-) But I'll always remember that omission because...well, you are supposed to say that at weddings, right?!...

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AAR...Pirates at play

The Monday's session on Religion Media and Culture focused on ritual in contemporary culture and media. Rituals, sociologically speaking, are sets of action with symbolic meaning that we perform usually prescribed by religion or tradition. A wedding ceremony has its rituals (candle lighting, exchange of rings etc.) and so do funerals. What happens when rituals are played out online?Rachel Wagner has done a lot of research into video games and the ideas of interactivity, play, rules, narrative and conflict. Even in telling a fixed story, there is room for interactivity and "Play". She urged us to think of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. This was a fixed story but viewers gave him room...

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AAR...Pirates and Civil Religion...

Session two at the AAR conference:Rethinking Civil Religion. No, it has nothing to do with being rude at church, although you should never be rude at church (or really anywhere.)To sum up: Civil Religion is the sum of religious concepts, rituals and dialogue that are adopted by the state and become part of the fabric of the social consciousness of that state. Robert Bellah coined the concept back in 1967. Think of it this way: the USA has a constitutional separation of church and state. But...the money says in "In God we Trust", political functions start with prayer, and every president has invoked terminology like "sacred trust" and "moral duty", the language of religion to rally the citizenry....

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AAR...Pirates and religious work?

Here I am at the AAR conference in Montreal. This is a BIG conference and the Palais des Congres is a huge facility. I arrived by train at 7:45am and headed right over to the venue for my first session at 9am. Religion and Social Sciences make much more sense when you're sleep deprived! :-)This session's theme was Velben's Theory of the Leisure Class: Rethinking Religion and Economy if the Age of Crisis. Yeah, I had to look it up too. In a nut shell, Velben was a foundational economist and sociologist who developed the ideas of conspicuous consumption and the ruler class as "the leisure class" because they really did not contribute economically to the survival of the group. Religion he would...

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Flu, Faith and Information...

H1N1. Such a little word but it unsettles people so much. Those of us in the developed world aren't used to this kind of pandemic. We don't daily deal with the risk of Malaria or Tuberculosis which combined annually kill 2.7 million people. We are well fed and affluent. We put much faith in our health care system (though we complain about it a lot.) Now we feel vulnerable and a little scared. Notice how people react now when someone coughs on the bus? The question "have you got your flu shot yet?" is replacing "so how about this weather?" as Canadian small talk.So how do I respond? I educate myself with sources that I can critically evaluate. That includes government sources, workplace sources,...

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The worldview of software...

Today was my first time operating our church's worship software EasyWorship. This is a presentation software specifically designed for congregational worship in contrast to traditional powerpoint which is business software. Well, I need a lot more practice, but I think we all worshiped despite my miscues. :-) It is a great software application and I think a worthwhile investment for any congregation, with two caveats attached. One, it still needs skilled people to plan the presentation and then execute the plan. Software doesn't enter into worship, it cannot seek the heart of God, and it cannot sense the mood of a congregation (in respect to Asimov I'll say at least not yet.)The other caveat...

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AAR...the pirate conference?

Actually it is the American Academy of Religion conference...though given the range of topics covered I'm sure there is room for something on buccaneer theology or privateer prayers. Groan...I just googled "pirate's prayer" and wouldn't you know it someone "piratized" the 23rd Psalm...will I never learn?But I digress...the AAR conference is next week and I hope to attend (with a laptop to blog the sessions). There is so many concurrent sessions that I am having a hard time choosing. One session I am interested in is about sacred spaces especially spaces that become politically contentious. The folks at Oxford Press are offering a "how to publish your book" session. Now I just need to write one....

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Does Facebook hurt your faith? What do you think?

A new study by two Gordon College faculty is making its way around the blogsphere . To sum up: young college students are using social software so much they don't have time for christian disciplines like prayer, Bible study and service. They apparently found:Thirty-three percent of students surveyed (between the ages of 18 and 27) from four evangelical Christian colleges use Facebook or other social media for as much as two hours every day.Twelve percent reported using it between 2 and 4 hours.Another 2.8 percent said they used Facebook between 4 and 7 hours every day.I do wonder about the cause and effective though; is Facebook keeping young Christians from Biblical priorities or they simply...

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"Well, probably because I enjoy..."

"talking with them." I've been reading the book Information and Emotion this week about the importance of affective aspects in information seeking users studies (i.e. how our emotions influence our seeking of information.) It is an emerging field, although we've known all along that how I feel can radically change how I search for information. Am I frustrated, satisfied, inspired, confused, bored; oh sorry, I'm online: (>_<) :-) :-0 :-\ (-.-) ? I noted in an earlier post that people frequently prefer talking with other people when seeking information. The words in the title were from a study I assisted with some years ago that considered how people selected information sources....

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Church as InfoOrg...

As part of my research, I will be gathering and analyzing church produced information. I would imagine that most people would not consider churches as information organizations. The activities of worship and social outreach would predominate in people's minds. Yet two of the key activities of churches are preaching and teaching; both information intense activities. As a former pastor I know that a significant time investment goes into sermon preparation and presentation. What about preservation? Is that sermon a "one shot deal" or is that information preserved, stored and indexed in a way that it can be accessed by the congregation for future reference. I have benefited from reading some collected...

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Somethin's wrong in my spiritual neighbourhood...

who am I gonna call? My public librarian! Yes, surprise...not the priest or pastor... and not the local theologian (do you even know who the local theologian is?) Sometimes when people have a spiritual question they turn to the place they go to answer questions like "where do I find information on jobs in Alberta?" or "when was Genghis Khan born?" The local public library.I had an email from a librarian colleague who is working in the public library. He was asked a Bible question by a regular patron. He is a skilled librarian but not being satisfied with the information sources he had at hand he emailed me to ask for a second opinion. Yes, librarians do network to find the best answer to your...

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I've seen researchers pray for good data but...

what happens when prayer is your data? Not all the information used for church decision-making is easily measured or quantified. Take prayer for instance. Many church leaders regularly use prayer as an information seeking tool in determining the will of God for their churches. Is it really information seeking? Well consider this true story I recently heard:Stoneridge Fellowship Church was faced with a dilemma. They were building a new facility and had already sold their existing property. There were unexpected construction delays and after a couple of extensions, the new owners wanted the keys to their building. Where does a congregation of 500 go to find a room? It sounds like the beginning...

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Bad news from La Bonne Nouvelle

On June 20, 2009 La Bonne Nouvelle bookstore in Moncton closed after 75 years serving both the French and English evangelical communities. It surprised me; they were such a part of the evangelical community though it shouldn't have been unexpected. Christian bookstores have been closing all over Canada particularly since the collapse of major Canadian distributer R. G. Mitchell last year. They join the ranks of small bookstores of all stripe and persuasion some with even longer history (e.g. The Book Room) who just can't compete in the new economy. When I was a boy there were three evangelical christian bookstores within walking distance; alas now there is one (if I cared to walk that far!)....

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Hey, I knew it was you...

I recently submitted an article for review with a scholarly journal and part of the process is a double blind peer review. In a nut shell: my article is sent to several reviewers anonymously; I don't know who reviewed it and they don't know who wrote it. No personal biases. That is the theory anyway. In a small field like mine it isn't hard to guess who is reviewing the article. Hints like "the author did not include the essential paper by John Smith." Hi John, is that you? I once reviewed a paper for a journal and could tell you within the first two pages the university and then it is not too hard to guess the author; not many there who could write on that topic. The double blind review worked...

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Community Church meets World Wide Web

This morning Fall River Baptist Church streamed its first service via the internet. This is not a large congregation and it doesn't have a big tech budget. It does have a few skilled people, access to basic web technology and the vision to do something different. I was in the sound booth watching as this internet experiment unfolded. Gradually, people started picking up the feed until by service end there were 9 remote observers. Pretty good for first time out! This included former members moved away and friends of the church. There was a chat feature to allow some limited two way communication. This raises interesting questions about the power of technology to help religious communities keep...

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Still seeking?

I think we all want to live significant lives. The question for most of us is how. For people of religious faith they frequently turn to God, seeking his guidance and direction to answer that question. Kovach (1999) in his PhD dissertation proposed that at the deepest level “seeking to know the will of God may reflect a desire to be accountable to Christ with a profound concern to accomplish something significant for Christ and his kingdom” (p. 2). He argued that finding the will of God has been a preoccupation of evangelical Christians since the 1960s and cited a wealth of literature that offered guidance in finding guidance. When I quickly surveyed Bowker’s Global Books in Print (January 15,...

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Virtual Church Part II

Interestingly, the topic of virtual church came up on Dr. Heidi Campbell's blog (see "There is no virtual ekkelsia (?)". Two Pastors associated with the emerging church movement have argued that there can be no virtual community by the very definition of community. I am somewhat inclined to agree except that there are people in cyberspace who are finding their church needs met online. I recommend Campbell's book "Exploring Religious Community Online" (Peter Lang, 2005) if you are curious about some people's online experiences. Does community require a physical presence? Is the growth of online churches a symptom of the failure of many real life churches to build authentic communities? Could...

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Religiously Environmental

The American Academy of Religion conference will be held in Montreal on November 7-10. That it is in Canada is an extreme rarity and I'm registered to attend (I'll blog my sessions). In the course of planning for this conference, I had a discussion with a prof who has given up conference travel for environmental reasons. I've often thought of this over the past few years both from fiscal as well as environmental standpoints. Such conferences are great learning experiences and even greater networking opportunities. But it is a lot of travel and expense for what is usually 3-4 days. As a Christian I need to be concerned with these questions. Sometimes I think Christians get so focused on the future...

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Church in SecondLife?

SecondLife is an online adult simulation that has existed since 2003. Those who haven't explored this virtual world may not realize how popular it is. Mainstream religion is starting to discover the hundreds of thousands of people who frequent this world, and are creating their own places. As I write this, my avatar is sitting in a service of Calvary Chapel SecondLife, a evangelical Scottish virtual congregation. There are about two dozen other avatars here listening to the sermon. It is an interesting experience to participate in this environment. It is a "come as you are place"; no suits here (in fact not everyone here even looks human.) But it is a form of community made up from people around...

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Religion Online...

Chris Helland is my PhD supervisor and had an opportunity to participate in the Google Techtalks about religion in cyberspace....

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Poetically thinking...

This is a bit of an aside but I experimented last year with new methodologies for analysis and representation in a study of how people are understood by the library system. I argued that the theories about people and information behaviour implicit in how we construct our services influence how we perceive people. A product of this study was three poems/videos.http://www.iamproject.caThe project has become part of a larger research article under review presently but I thought I would share the creative bit he...

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Why "informing faith"?

The nature of information is changing because how we communicate with each other is changing. This is a product of the digital age that we live in; we are discovering new ways to create, store and exchange information, and reinventing older ways. This is highly relevant for churches and people of faith because belief like other ways of knowing is constructed. Our experiences, upbringing, education and our personal encounters with God shape who we are are and how we will relate to the world around us. The digital world is changing information and changing how we construct ourselves. That is worth exploring and thinking about. IMHO. ...

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