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Connecting Face to Face

February 13, 2009 By 1 Comment

Heidi Campbell teaches at Texas A&M and has a new book coming out: When Religion Meets New Media (Routledge.) She was the keynoter at an interesting event last year sponsored by Alban on Church 2.0 and I especially remember something she said about social networking communities: People who connect on Facebook, Twitter, Second Life, etc. have the need to meet face to face eventually. Second Lifers now have conventions that rival anything Star Trek ever inspired.

Next week, several of us are meeting in Louisville to lay eyes on each other for the first time – or at least it will be the first time for many. Most of us will be part of the Presbymergent Coordinating Team. I am hopeful and prayerfully pumped to gather and look at the future of the church from a Presbymergent perspective. And I’d ask for your prayers as we gather.

It’s a great time to be a loyal radical.

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Technology and the Next Presbyterian Hymnal

January 21, 2009 By 25 Comments

Sing to the Lord a new song!  Technology opens doors in the church and in the world. One tweet on Twitter can connect pastors in ways unimaginable when my Dad was in seminary (sorry, Pops). Blog communities bring new and exciting — though imperfect — ways to discuss Christ and culture. What self-respecting youth group these days doesn’t have a Facebook group? That said, I’m also aware of the growing digital divide in our congregations. Now, when we think of our diversity, we must also remember the diversity of those with email and those without, those with a high-speed internet connection and those without a computer. Ahh, the challenges of ministry in 2009.

The Presbyterian Hymnal Committee, a group formed last year, is in the initial stages of developing the next Presbyterian hymnal. The next hymnal will include songs composed since 1990 (the publication date of the blue hymnal) and will seek to honor our rich heritage. Perhaps it will bring back some from the red book, but it’ll also put into print some of the new places that God is leading us. For all your next hymnal questions check out http://presbyterianhymnal.org , and remember the committee is just beginning its work.

Especially in these early stages, though, I want to take to the committee some ways that new technology might best be used to sing a new song unto the Lord. Copyright law is tricky enough with printed materials, let alone when concerned with electronic formats, but I want to think broadly at this stage.

(On a parenthetical note, let’s not forget the amazing “technology” of the bound paper printed book. What a remarkable, durable, cheap, easy-to-use, technology it is — and will be for years to come. The next hymnal will certainly be in book format, but why stop there?)

The committee can make no promises — we have budget considerations like everybody else — but we will consider, in good faith, how God may be calling the church to use technology in its congregational song and worship planning. That’s where you come in.

Comment away. What tech ideas — hymnal/singing/worship related — would be handy in your congregation? How do you use the hymnal for worship planning and how could that be bettered with new technology? Do you use existing online worship resources? What, technologically speaking, should the hymnal committee consider?

Pop a comment on this post, or email me at adamjcopeland at gmail dot com. Peace.

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Emergence, Postmodernity, and the Love Ethic

January 10, 2009 By 2 Comments

In order for the emergent movement to be both progressive and faithful, it’s going to have to show how it transcends the deconstructionism and emphasis on radical particularity that has defined much of postmodern discourse. What does that mean?

Deconstructionism can be defined in an almost infinite number of ways, primarily because the postmodern movement tends to view any effort at definition to be somehow oppressive. I tend to view it as epistemological defenestration. ” Epi-whazza defene-huh?” you might say.

Epistemology is a fancy pantsy way of saying: “the study of how you know what you know.” It’s useful in moderation, but in excess it is also why philosophy has gone from being something that everyday human beings discussed and debated on the street corners to this self-referential something that functionally nobody gives a good God damn about.

Defenestration is an old term from the early days of the anarchist movement, and it basically just means “smashing the windows.” If the old system is to be destroyed, you find the places it can be shattered, and then you shatter them. Preferably by using a senior Vice President of Lehman Brothers as a projectile. This is pretty much the entire life of postmodern academics, although it happens through incomprehensible journal articles read by twelve other people rather than huge rioting mobs.

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