how the internet (and the world) works

I know at least one helpful thing about the way the internet and social networking work. You see, when I first started really using the internet, I was in high school. Back then, you opened up your AOL browser and connected via dial-up modem and tied up your phone-line. With the rapid transition from dial-up to various high speed setups, the internet went from being a finicky little toddler, to an immature teenager in a matter of years. Now, with social networking, we've advanced into an era of maturity that I am not even sure how to put into a metaphor.

What seems to be different now, as compared to my AOL browser and dial-up connection, is that I no longer go out and search for things on the internet unless I really need to. Now, almost everything I read or do on the internet comes to me. It comes to me mostly by my facebook newsfeed and sometimes via my twitter feed (I'm still a neanderthal when it comes to twitter). To prove the point, you're probably here on my blog because I posted the link to this blog on my facebook page and you were either my friend and clicked the link to read the blog or a friend of a friend of a friend shared the link on their facebook page and you clicked the link to read the blog. You see, the internet, or at least the various pages sitting on servers out there in the world, now come to you.

There are other streams of information that come to me too, thanks to my fancy new iPhone and all the great apps and e-mail I am able to access with my high speed 3G web connection (even small-town Minnesota). These are news streams, most often. But they also include apps that allow me to interact with discussion forums for things I'm interested in. For example, the New York Times headlines stream right to my iPhone, as does my HomeBrewTalk forum that I interact with. It all comes to me even faster, now.

I'd like to think about this in relationship to one of my primary vocations: as a pastor. The thought is simple: if it ain't on facebook, I probably ain't readin' it or lookin' at it. And if I'm not neither is anyone else. Not that I'm trying to bill myself as some incredibly connected and popular person with millions of friends and followers. What I'm saying is that the world happens on facebook (or twitter). The messages we receive, the information we come across, stream to us through our newsfeed.

Before you begin to think this is something radical and new-fangled, this is how media works. And all of life is mediated. Before the internet, information came by television, or radio, or newspaper, or letter, or sitting next to the guys at the Friendship Cafe uptown, or any other means by which you took in information. This ain't new, it's just happening in a new way, and it's becoming the primary way in which we interact with the world. The world comes to us, and we rarely need to go out seeking the world.

What this means (at least in my world of ministry and how I'd like to think about it right now) is that church websites are nearly obsolete, aside from providing the basic information about a church that visitors or newcomers to our area might be looking for. (For a good list of things visitors look for on church websites, see this article). 

The rest of the content that a church might be interested in sharing could more easily be posted on a facebook page (shameless fb page plug for the church I serve, which I realize could be much better if there was someone who had more time than I could post to it). The content would also be much more widely distributed in a much more efficient manner via facebook. Again, simply put, the internet now comes to you.

This also means that my regular interactions with people are different, especially with people of the teenaged variety. Kids in my confirmation class have information come to them. They are flooded with it. And to make matters more interesting, if the information ain't coming in an interesting way, it ain't worth hearing.

Boiled down: we live in a participatory age, one that invites us to participate in things that are worth our time and attention. What's worth our time and attention gets refined and filtered through 'trending' topics/issues/events/ideas on facebook and twitter, which then stream into our view through our newsfeed. When we participate in these things that find our way to our newsfeed, we can choose how active or inactive we'd like to be with them. We get to define how involved we are.

With the visible, (un)organized church, people have to seek you out, rather than you streaming through their newsfeed; and when they do, there are predefined ways in which they participate.

As a side note: I'm grateful that God mediates the Gospel through proclamation and shows up wherever His Word is proclaimed. If it weren't for that, the true, invisible church wouldn't exist and God would have no saints in the kingdom. We've never been good at seeking out God. God has always been seeking us out and streaming to us through the proclamation of the good news.