Category: Web/Tech

The Authentic Use Of Technology

Leith Anderson on using technology with different generations: he sees PowerPoint as a Baby Boomer tool, but finds it less useful with younger generations who crave an authenticity in preaching that is difficult to hold to when everything is tightly scripted to connect with the screen. So he invites people to text questions on the sermon (which will appear on screen). He believes this participatory use of technology is perceived as more authentic.

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Computers For Ministry

As Dave Warnock has noted, Methodist ministers and deacons now have new support for all things computing. After a lot of imaginative thinking (only teasing), it has been called ‘Computers For Ministry‘.

The best part is undoubtedly the chance to have a proper work email address, something certain other denominations have had for a while. Anglican and Catholic dioceses in my experience have a system; the Salvation Army has a national one. I have registered one this morning. So my new work email address is:

david DOT faulkner AT methodist DOT org DOT uk

(set out in the strange way above to stop spammers harvesting it from this page).

Dave Warnock thanks those who have put this in place, and hints there would be a long shopping list for improvements. I think he is right on both counts. I think the frustration for me with the new system is a selfish one: I can’t expect it to be set up for technophiles. Instead, it is computing for people who don’t like computing. (Rather like buying a Gallo wine has been said to be wine for people who don’t like wine.)

The giveaway is on page 6 of the booklet we were sent last week, where we find these priceless words:

‘Activating the Computers for Ministry WebMail System: Please note that this process requires access to the Internet.’

It’s on a par with buying a bag of peanuts, and being warned they may contain nuts.

So the webmail is a good start, so long as you accept that as with most church things in the UK, it’s not on a par with ‘secular’ offerings. (A real sign we’re not professionals, Dave!) The inbox will only contain 256 MB, rather short of the 2 GB my Gmail inbox will take. Messages are limited to 15 MB in size, so there will be no emailing around of grooving video files.

A more serious problem with the webmail, though, was this. Although the actual webmail is on a secure web page, the page that generated my default password was not. I went to log out of that page, and realised it was safer to close that tab in Firefox!

The parts I shall opt out of are the broadband and PC equipment provisions. Methodism has done deals with two companies I loathe: BT and PC World. (But again, they’re more likely to be suitable for people who are afraid of computers.) I think there are real problems with these parts of the package. I don’t see the need to tie in with PC World for the purchase of PCs; it seems an unnecessary layer. I certainly don’t see why any agreement needs to be with their Business division. It all sounds professional, but the average Methodist minister working from home is doing so in a very different way from someone in an office. A business contract means paying out more money, usually.

Which brings me to the fact that we’ll also have dead trees sent to us by BT. Methodism proudly tells us it has negotiated a discounted package with them. Except again, it’s a discounted business package. Er, why? Especially as the discount still comes in at £23.99 per month, a rate that is easily beaten by other ISPs offering comparable packages. I won’t be migrating from the excellent PlusNet (even though, sadly, they were bought out by BT some months ago).

I read out the BT and PC World parts of the glossy booklet to my wife. By profession, she is an auditor. Her reaction was, ‘Backhander.’ Now I don’t suppose for one minute that someone in Methodism has done any such unethical deal, but I do have to query whether the PC and broadband parts of ‘Computers For Ministry’ have produced ‘best value’ for the church. They don’t look that way to me, as an outsider. The booklet says on page 15 that consultation happened between

‘members of the Connexional Team and various groups and bodies (chief among them the Ordained Ministries Committee and the Connexional Allowances Committee)’.

I would have been reassured if they had told us that people with technical expertise had been involved. I expect they were, but they don’t seem to have been given sufficient prominence.

In passing, the one relief about the PC equipment part of the package is that the derisory sum of £150 per year that circuits must put away for ministers to buy a new computer every four years is confirmed as a minimum amount. It would buy a modest laptop, but not the software, nor the peripherals such as a reliable printer. I am glad to serve in a circuit that has for some years given a rather more generous computer allowance to its ministers. They also pay our broadband subscriptions (we refund a proportion for personal use), whereas the BT deal here is invoiced to the minister or deacon.

There we go, glad I’ve got that off my chest. (Aren’t blogs great for that?) Now off to worry about things that put this in the shade – like the unevangelised, the poor, the sick and those suffering injustice.

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Free Websites

Two of my churches have been talking to one degree or another about setting up websites. There are always two obstacles: one is cost, and the other is time. We have now found a solution, and it’s from those kind philanthropists at Microsoft. As part of their Office Live offering for small businesses, you can sign up for Office Live Basics, which gives you a free website and domain name. The site is designed online, and anyone with word processor skills can contribute. No coding knowledge is needed. Up to 25 email addresses can be assigned to the domain – more than enough for the relevant departments of my churches.

There are disadvantages, but none of them is critical for my churches. There aren’t all the bells and whistles of similar paid-for offerings in the church community, such as the excellent Church Edit. So we’ll have to shrink our JPG photos before uploading, rather than having it done automatically for us. And we won’t be able to podcast the services or sermons, due to bandwidth restrictions. But then, it’s free, and Church Edit, Church 123 and 2Day understandably have to charge fees.

Likewise, there is a limited number of templates. But Church Edit and Church 123 also have a finite selection of templates. The Microsoft ones are as reasonable as any.

So watch this space – hopefully before long Broomfield Methodist and Hatfield Peverel Methodist will have decent-looking online presences, to join St Augustine’s, who have had a simple site for a little while.

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Facebook Faith

Brian Draper has written about Facebook in this week’s LICC Connecting With Culture column. Dave Warnock has recently written two posts on the phenomenon.

Recently I too, succumbed, and set up a profile. I’m too old for MySpace, whose grotty layouts seem to reflect the acne of its most avid users. I only like checking out bands on it, because it’s a great way to preview their music (that’s how I recently got into Duke Special). Facebook seems a little more grown-up, which may be surprising, given its origins among students. Expanding beyond the American student communities and opening up its API to outside developers to produce new applications have both been significant ‘growing up’ actions. Linkedin seems too much about CVs, job hunting and head-hunting – which makes it inappropriate for my particular calling/profession.

For me, Facebook is currently functioning like a broader Friends Reunited. I’ve belonged to that for a few years and made contact with some old school friends, but it’s limited by needing to know the school/college/workplace someone was at. They joy of the last few days on Facebook has been to find again old friends I worked with, especially from ecumenical youth ministry in Hertford in the mid-1990s. I have to remember it isn’t the same as face-to-face contact. It’s a helpful second best to meeting up again with these people who meant the world to me. I’ve never had friends like I had there.

Draper talks about how Facebook could prompt us into strengthening (or renewing?) friendships in their proper sense. He also talks about how well we know ourselves and are known by ourselves and God. Disclosure is an interesting theme for faith and the web. There is the question of how much self-disclosure we engage in online, and open ourselves to the risk of identity theft. It becomes a parallel to the way we fear to open up face-to-face with people, perhaps due to bad past experiences of the wisdom of caution. Jesus didn’t entrust himself to everyone, because he knew what was in their hearts. But – as we know increasingly these days – ‘story’ is vital. Our story and its part in God’s great story is significant, not least because it touches others. In this sense ‘testimony’ is of course much more than a conversion account (as it always should have been).

But Draper’s other comment about how well we know others is one that hits me as a minister, especially in a week when I am consumed with funerals. Whenever I take the funeral of someone I knew in a congregation, I always learn things from their loved ones that I never knew before. That happened to me on Wednesday. I conducted the service for a saint who, in the two years I had known him, had been ravaged by Alzheimer’s Disease. In the address I pointed to 1 Corinthians 13:12, where Paul says that now we look through a glass darkly, but then we shall see face-to-face; we shall know, even as we are fully known (by God). God doesn’t need Facebook; we have his profile elsewhere: Jesus said, if you have seen me, you have seen the Father, and even then, there is more to know of God. But for dear David who died, the Gospel is that not only is his knowledge healed back from the distortions of what it was before Alzheimer’s caused its two deaths (the death of his personality and then the death of his body), he now knows better than he ever did. He knows ‘as he is fully known.’

Facebook can’t do any of that for us, but whatever its faults I am convinced it can be a kingdom of God tool. I don’t mean that we just post a Christian application on our profile. I mean that it can help us get going on that process of knowing one another’s story in the great story of God. That then has to be followed up, and that has to mean incarnationally, in flesh and blood, not the ones and zeros of the digital world.

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