Curtains up, a little...
This week we did sort of a soft launch of the Methodist youth website. We presented to the Methodist school principals, and requested that each school designate a liaison to submit student creative work. We also prepared bookmarks for distribution to a gathering of student leaders on Saturday. I am happy that we have finally opened the curtain, though the audience be small.
This website project has forced me to learn a few things about web development, not so much on the technical end - at least with the content management system I don't have to be an expert in mark-up code. The greater learning has been trying to organize the effort while navigating within the limits of ecclesial structure. It is not simply my website, but an official organ of the church.
Developing media instruments for the church falls partly under the umbrella of PR or corporate communication. After all, it's an organization that deals with a public, both within its walls and outside. And most certainly the church has information that it would like to circulate widely and clearly. Organizational information systems can run the range from symmetrical (two-way communication) to asymmetrical (in which information goes only one way).
Print media, by its static nature, can offer only limited symmetrical communication, if there is an opportunity to write letters to the editor, or something similar. What print media does best is disseminate information. We expect that of newspapers, magazines and books. We expect quality reporting and writing from journalists, because we want the honest facts and authoritative opinions.
The Internet is presenting some opportunities unknown to masters of print media, a form that looks sort of like print (after all, web pages use basically the same type faces and similar layout to a printed page), but with far greater capacity for interaction. The reader can not only interact with the text, but also with the writer or producer and with other readers. It's a marvelous invention for lovers of symmetrical communication. Hence there is an increased expectation that organizations, including churches, that use the Internet will also want to be transparent and open in their communication style. That's the strength of the Internet medium.
But this is only general corporate communication. The church operates by its theology, its understanding of God and divine purpose. There is a longstanding tradition within western theology, God as the "unmoved mover," that would suggest asymmetrical patterns of communication. But at the heart of Christianity is an amazing concept that may lend itself more to symmetrical communication. That concept is the incarnation. "In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son" (Hebrew 1:1-2). In other words, God communicates not just through one-way speech, not just through a set of texts, not just through dreams and visions, but through a human being who both speaks and listens, through one who engaged other men and women in face-to-face conversation. This is reminiscent of the first garden paradise where relationship with God is envisioned as one who walks with his people and converses with them in the cool of the evening.
I hope that this youth website and all other such instruments of Christian communication will help us to find our way back to that garden.
This website project has forced me to learn a few things about web development, not so much on the technical end - at least with the content management system I don't have to be an expert in mark-up code. The greater learning has been trying to organize the effort while navigating within the limits of ecclesial structure. It is not simply my website, but an official organ of the church.
Developing media instruments for the church falls partly under the umbrella of PR or corporate communication. After all, it's an organization that deals with a public, both within its walls and outside. And most certainly the church has information that it would like to circulate widely and clearly. Organizational information systems can run the range from symmetrical (two-way communication) to asymmetrical (in which information goes only one way).
Print media, by its static nature, can offer only limited symmetrical communication, if there is an opportunity to write letters to the editor, or something similar. What print media does best is disseminate information. We expect that of newspapers, magazines and books. We expect quality reporting and writing from journalists, because we want the honest facts and authoritative opinions.
The Internet is presenting some opportunities unknown to masters of print media, a form that looks sort of like print (after all, web pages use basically the same type faces and similar layout to a printed page), but with far greater capacity for interaction. The reader can not only interact with the text, but also with the writer or producer and with other readers. It's a marvelous invention for lovers of symmetrical communication. Hence there is an increased expectation that organizations, including churches, that use the Internet will also want to be transparent and open in their communication style. That's the strength of the Internet medium.
But this is only general corporate communication. The church operates by its theology, its understanding of God and divine purpose. There is a longstanding tradition within western theology, God as the "unmoved mover," that would suggest asymmetrical patterns of communication. But at the heart of Christianity is an amazing concept that may lend itself more to symmetrical communication. That concept is the incarnation. "In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son" (Hebrew 1:1-2). In other words, God communicates not just through one-way speech, not just through a set of texts, not just through dreams and visions, but through a human being who both speaks and listens, through one who engaged other men and women in face-to-face conversation. This is reminiscent of the first garden paradise where relationship with God is envisioned as one who walks with his people and converses with them in the cool of the evening.
I hope that this youth website and all other such instruments of Christian communication will help us to find our way back to that garden.
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