my district superintendent whom i respect a lot has mentioned on more than one occasion that he wanted me to input on this 'virtual church' project. i didn't know much about it till yesterday. hap, a pastor whom i also respect greatly in our conference sent out this proposal VirtualChurchfinally. i hate to critique or question in a final draft (note, the format of the final draft is due to me importing to google docs and not tweaking when converting to pdf, my fault, i'm lazy) but if you want me in on the project and ask for my input or energy to help get going.. i am going to be honest. so i went into writing this epic response. with all the other happenings, i am betting my bishop & ds are rolling their eyes as they read another email from me.
hi all,
thanks for including me in the special project. hap, thanks for all the work that you have done. i have a couple of questions and suggestions so if you don't mind entertaining me. apologies if this changes it from a final proposal.
i saw that we are anticipating a filming of bishop wills small group facilitator presentation this coming weekend. does this mean we are having any meetings before or after to discuss success, next steps, etc.? i ask this, as i am somewhat confused with where we exactly are in this process. i know i've been around this conversation, ie. i've heard the exploration of "virtual church," but until hap's proposal document yesterday, i had little clue as to what it was all about. so i'd be interested to know when a next collaboration event is.
some thoughts, take them for what you find.
when i first heard of the "virtual church" i was expecting something like the church of fools experiment by the british methodist church some four years ago. i know there was some discussion of bringing that back with more current technology, saint pixels was the name i heard of. jay voorhees would know more about that and i believe a lay member of blakemore umc (name escapes me) as they were both part of the church of fools project. the site is still active, i happen to visit it two or three times a year just to kick around in it.
i was encouraged to know this wasn't our route. though i don't think this is a bad idea, i do not think it isn't our endeavor. i like the idea of creating resources to help plug people in and direct them into the local church, but my quick question to that is.. isn't that what umcom or the united methodist publishing house is for?
a response i might hear from that is, 'well they don't do things specific for our particular context' which i'd say is fair. however, they do have resources that we probably should have some access to without spending around the 11-17-20,000 dollars that is budgeted out knowing the actual cost when things break or are needing an extra piece of equipment. a response i might hear from that is, 'well they don't loan out items or will not allow to travel' which is fair. but when the scope of this operation (as i am seeing it take) with work hours and the need to spread it out due to the fact we do not have a paid staff (only bill) to make this all happen, the need to loan out and then control equipment will be so great, a natural reaction would be to buckle down on controls and then it becomes more hassle then benefit. this might not be the case, but in processing it, is my natural state to troubleshoot.
i have an ultimate question of... have we asked churches what they need in these realms of technology? when i have taught tech workshops or talked with young people. the general rule is it isn't because of anything technological savy that has gotten them back to church. it is that old school personal invitation and long term relationship. it might happen over the net, but it is within social networking.
now, resourcing the church leader and/or reaching young adults in a community is different & i have some more expanding thoughts.
in the case of phase 2. there are many programs out there that will allow people to conference live and with images & video feeds already. a few weeks ago i had a 6 person conference conversation with social media expert joseph jaffee from south africa online, with camera feeds so we could all interact and see each other and converse in real time. only trick was some folks has to put on headsets to avoid microphone feedback. that software is called oovoo and is free (though that particular one is still in beta version). skype has been used for years. i use it with my family and can connect via computer webcams with great quality and no expense, well, a 70 dollar christmas gift for my mom.. i plan on using one of these softwares to do summer intern interviews from candida
