Keynote for education group URC away week, on the focus of 'The Church in a the Digital Age'

1. THE CHURCH IN THE A
DIGITAL AGE
Dr Bex Lewis
Research Fellow in Social Media and Online
Learning, CODEC, St John’s, Durham University
Director, Digital Fingerprint

2. https://twitter.com/drbexl

3. “There is a revolution sweeping across the globe, driven by the
massive growth of the internet and internet related
technologies. Known as the Digital Revolution it is on par with
other great global shifts such as the Agrarian Revolution and
the Industrial Revolution. And it is completely changing the
landscape of how we communicate, how we influence, how
we relate. This isn’t simply about coming to grips with a new
technology to assist us in our work, but requires of us a
fundamental shift in our processes, our structures and
approaches. If we don’t respond then as Eric Hoffer states, we
will find ourselves, ‘beautifully equipped to deal with a world
that no longer exists.’”
Event Publicity, 2010
The Digital Revolution?

4. 15th C: The Printing Press
Image Source: Wikipedia

5. 1964: Marshall McLuhan
Image Source: Wikipedia

6. “Before the press … information was passed mouth-to-ear,
scribe-to-scribe; it was changed in the process; there was
little sense of ownership and authorship. In the five-century-
long Gutenberg era, text did set how we see our world:
serially with a neat beginning and a defined end; permanent;
authored. Now, we are passing out of this textual era and
that may well affect how we look at our world. That may
appear to change how we think. But it won't change our
wires.”
Pew Report, 2012
quoting Jeff Jarvis, Journalist

7. “Technology should not dictate our
values or our methods. Rather, we
must use technology out of our
convictions and values.”
John Dyer, From the Garden to the
City, 2011,p5

8. Christians and Churchgoing
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171776_290510.pdf

9. Churchgoing in Decline?
http://www.whychurch.org.uk/tearfund_church.pdf

10. John
Wesley
“I look
upon
the
world
as my
parish.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jwesleysitting.JPG

11. "If you want to build a presence in the social media
platform, then you need to be present."
- @unmarketing

13. Even though in practice, face-to-face
communication can, of course, be
angry, negligent, resistant, deceitful and
inflexible, somehow it remains the ideal
against which mediated communication
is judged as flawed.
Prof Sonia Livingstone, Children and the
Internet: Great Expectations and Challenging
Realities. 2009, p26

14. A moral panic may be
defined as an episode, often
triggered by alarming media
stories and reinforced by
reactive laws and public
policy, of exaggerated or
misdirected public concern,
anxiety, fear, or anger over a
perceived threat to social
order.
http://www.ashgate.com/pdf/SamplePages/Ashgate-Research-
Companion-to-Moral-Panics-Intro.pdf
Image Credit: Stockfresh

15. https://twitter.com/hanelly/status/405754162555944960/photo/1

16. Right back to Socrates…
This discovery of yours will create
forgetfulness in the learners' souls,
because they will not use their
memories; they will trust to the external
written characters and not remember
of themselves…you give your disciples
not truth, but only the semblance of
truth; they will be hearers of many
things and will have learned nothing.
(Phaedrus, Benjamin Jowett trans.)
http://bigthink.
com/learning-
from-the-
past/socrates-
wouldnt-trust-
the-web-
should-we-
trust-him
Image Credit: Wikipedia

17. Tweeting in Church?
• Good Thing?
• Bad Thing?
• Why might/might
not people tweet
in church?
• What might
encourage more
‘engagement’?
Image Credit: Stockfresh

18. The Church Front Door?
For many churchgoing is no longer
the ‘cultural norm’. People don’t
actively ignore the church: they
don’t even think about it. … With
literally billions in the digital spaces,
the online social spaces presented
by churches need to be appealing,
welcoming, and not look like they
are just an afterthought: they are
now effectively the ‘front door’ to
your church for digital users, and
you ignore those spaces at your
peril.
http://www.churchgrowthrd.org.uk/blog/churchgrowth/growing_churches_in_the_digital_age
Image Credit: freeimages.com

19. Dr Sara Batts (2013)
http://phdinprogress.wordpress.com

20. Mission opportunities are very different…
when to step over the church threshold is
an unknown experience - compared with
attitudes when there is a known church to
which they can return.
Rev Lynda Barley, Head of Research and
Statistics for the Church of England (2007)

21. Source: Netcasters?

22. The Growth of the Internet
http://oxis.oii.ox.ac.uk/sites/oxis.oii.ox.ac.uk/files/content/files/publications/OxIS_2013.pdf

23. http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/files/2014/01/social-media-networks.png

24. Understanding Digital Culture

25. Those starting churches must do so from within
the cultures they are trying to reach … so that
those who respond face only the challenge of
Christian faith … and not that of having to adopt
a foreign church culture. Such new Christians are
thus able to remain within their own culture as
change-agents.
Graham Cray, Fresh Expressions

26. The digital environment is not a parallel or purely virtual
world, but is part of the daily experience of many people,
especially the young. Social networks are the result of
human interaction, but for their part they also reshape the
dynamics of communication, which builds relationships: a
considered understanding of this environment is
therefore a prerequisite for a significant presence
there.
Pope Benedict XVI (2013)

27. God is a communicating God: “In the
beginning was the word, and the
word was God…”.
God is extravagant in communication –
he is not a silent God who has to be
tempted into communicating with
people.
Rev Prof David Wilkinson
MediaLit, 2010
Image Credit: Durham University

28. #DIGIDisciple
those who seek to
live out their
Biblically-informed
Christian faith in the
digital space,
exploring both what it
means to be a
disciple in the digital
age, and also how
the digital age affects
or alters discipleship.

29. https://audioboo.fm/boos/1577833-what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-
digital-disciple-with-changingworship

30. What does it mean to ‘love your neighbour’in a world
in which a ‘friend’might as easily be the kid from
down the street you grew up with as a woman in
Botswana whom you’ve never seen in person and
only know in the context of Facebook status updates,
photos, and notes? … How can we negotiate spiritual
interaction in these contexts without losing sight of basic
elements of Christian faith expressed in traditional
embodied and geographically located practices of prayer,
worship, and compassion towards others?
Elizabeth Drescher, Tweet if You Heart Jesus
(2011, 127)

31. We are not selling something to the world that
will make more people like us, believe in our
story, join our churches. We are trying to be
something in the world that invites connection
and compassion, encourages comfort and
healing for those in need, and challenges those
in power to use that power in the service of
justice and love.
Elizabeth Drescher, Tweet if You Heart Jesus
(2011, 127)

32. [If we are…] means by which God
communicates and reveals himself through his
Spirit, then our blog posts, status updates,
tweets, artistic images, and online comments
should be products of a life transformed by Christ
and indwelled by his Spirit.As restored image
bearers, our online presence and activity should
image the Triune God.
Byers, A. Theomedia (2013, 196)

33. It’s something about the informality and
distance; the ability to pause and think,
which can be difficult in a conversation;
and the way discussions can pick up
where they left off several hours, days or
weeks later.
Emma Major, BIGBible Post, 2012

34. Forms of Church
Image Source: RGBStock

35. http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/08/22/car-salesmen-preachers-and-the-art-of-persuasion/
Darren Rowse, @Problogger
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j-Iy8fP0Ek
I loved working up a sermon in the lead up to
giving it. Researching,looking at what others
had to say on the topic, piecing together
thoughts, looking for illustrations and
examples (tangents) and then practicing giving
it and making the last minute tweaks and
additions in the day before Sunday arrived.

36. The conspicuous and centralProtestant sermon is one of
these. It made sense in a education- and resource-poor
(and frankly, entertainment-poor)age,but if I held forth
for twentyminutes or more everySunday, I expect to be
regularly challenged (perhaps mentally, and in an
unspokenway) by people who wouldGoogle for facts
during my oratory.
Scott Wells
http://boyinthebands.com/archives/new-church-small-sermon-long-sermon/

37. "The digital age isn’t killing off preaching, but what the
survey suggests is that too much preaching is doing too
little to motivate people to look at the world
differently and therefore live in it differently," said Paul
Johns, a director at the College of Preachers. "If that’s
so, we have to question what we preachers are actually
saying about the Bible and about contemporary issues,
and how well we’re engaging with our congregations.”
(2009)
http://ministrytodaymag.com/index.php/ministry-tools/main/18801-are-my-sermons-making-a-difference

38. Christian Bloggers
Image Source: RGBStock

39. Photoshopped Selves?
Image Source: Stockfresh

40. On the Emmaus Road, Jesus was recognized in
the breaking of bread rather than in the exegesis
of Scripture. That’s an intriguing lesson to learn
when so much of the web and so much of digital
communication is about proclamation rather than
reception.
Pete Phillips et al, 2013: 10

41. "If you want to build a presence in the social media
platform, then you need to be present."
- @unmarketing

42. “We should not overlook the fact that those who
for whatever reason lack access to social media
run the risk of being left behind,” with a reminder
that communication is ultimately a human
rather than a technological achievement.
Pope Francis, World
Communications Day, 2014

43. The Digital Age?
Image Source: RGBStock

44. Saint Teresa of Avila (adapted by Meredith
Gould, 2010)
Christ Has No Online Presence but Yours
Christ has no online presence but yours,
No blog, no Facebook page but yours,
Yours are the tweets through which love touches this
world,
Yours are the posts through which the Gospel is shared,
Yours are the updates through which hope is revealed.
Christ has no online presence but yours,
No blog, no Facebook page but yours.
http://churchsocmed.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/christ-has-no-online-presence-but-yours.html

45. References
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46. Image Source: iStockphoto