We all know that Western society has gone secular. But as much as secularism understands itself as religion-neutral, it has its own sacred cows. There are just certain things you don’t touch or critique about secular culture without being at risk of being called a blasphemer.

Media preference is one of those sacred cows.

I have noticed that little riles us up these days more than someone challenging our choices over what to watch, what to listen to, or what media technology to play with. To tread on the precious altar of pop culture and secular media is to blaspheme in this a-religious society.

Talking about the immorality of Hollywood is so 1980′s. Turning our haughty noses up to innuendo on TV is so early 90′s. Nay-saying the Internet and smartphones is so early 2000′s. So give it up already, prophets of gloom, and stop raining on the media parade.

I just wrote an article on negotiating our culture’s mediascape for Relevant Magazine’s website, due to appear early in the week. In the process of writing and thinking through that piece, I was reminded of something I’ve found while working on ‘TheoMedia,’ my upcoming media-theology book. What I have discovered is that we tend to develop an acute defensiveness whenever someone challenges our media preferences. I’m not a wholesale enthusiast of digital technology, but I have found that even I get defensive when reading material on the critical or cautious side of media appropriation. When something I read gouges at one of my media choices, I bristle with the desire to justify myself… even when I totally regret those choices.

So why are our media preferences so precious to us? Why have they become like sacred cows?

It is because media are fundamental to who we are as human beings. It is because sacred cows are themselves media forms. It is because media are so elemental to society that they are instantly integrated into the fabric of our lives.

I’ll explain.

1) Media are not just flippant, silly decorations suitable for silly ads, frothy commercials, or massive jumbo-trons. The concept of media is primal for who we are as humans. This is because we ourselves are media.

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

Our most ancient vocation is that of serving as media, divine media. You and I are both media of God, what I call “TheoMedia.”

2) A “sacred cow” is some symbol we divine image bearers have produced and into which we have invested powerful religious meaning. As such, a sacred cow is a media form. Media possess the power to bear and convey our most adored ideas.

3) And since we are so media-oriented and since media are so conducive for bearing such depths of precious meaning, they easily integrate into our lives.

So it just makes sense that we get all worked up if someone pokes at our use or embrace of various media in pop culture. Media are intrinsi to who we are, capable of bearing profound meaning, and easily intertwined into our lives.

Of course, there are other reasons why we bristle when our media preferences are challenged. For one, the church has been annoyingly effective at moralistic and legalistic culture-bashing. Our society is just sick of it. Even those of us in the church are sick of it. My article at Relevant (“The Vice of Innocence”) will address this to some degree.

We also get annoyed at media critiques because many of our media preferences have nothing necessarily wrong with them in the first place.

There is at least one more reason why we get defensive and indignant when our media preferences are challenged. It is because we are convicted.

What do you think? Let’s talk this through…

I had ground the coffee beans the night before in anticipation of an early Saturday morning reading a fine new book, Arthur Boer’s Living into Focus (my 7-year old is entertained that “the author is an Arthur.”)

In the pre-dawn Saturday darkness, I heard a tiny voice (that can get quite loud) calling “Daddy” from her crib.

I warmed up her milk while I brewed my coffee.  We are both very particular about our morning hot drinks.  I heat her milk in the microwave for 47 seconds.  My French Press (cafetiere) is timed for 4 minutes.  When the rituals were complete, we sat down happily under a blanket with clay mug of a bourbon espresso blend and a plastic thermos filled with perfectly warmed milk.  I also grabbed my book.

Boers is writing about “focal practices,” a phrase associated with University of Montana philosopher Albert Borgmann.

Eugene Peterson wrote the book’s foreword.  Boers, Borgmann and Peterson alike share a suspicious disposition toward the technological ethos of our age—an important perspective for me to understand as I research for my media-theology book.  To a large degree, it is a perspective I instinctively share… though I have to say I am trying to listen carefully to other voices, a practice that is causing me to rethink a few things.

With my youngest daughter sipping milk and me sipping coffee, I was reading Boers’ evaluations of a home-life shaped around the TV.  In his view, important focal practices—ritual activities that healthily shape us and bind us to God and each other—can include hiking, meal preparation, woodworking, sharing fellowship around the supper/lunch/breakfast.  These varied exercises engage us in more healthy formative ways than video games or movie-going.  But practicing them is undermined by the perpetual question arising from our technological culture: “what are we going to watch…?” [1]

“Dad, can I watch TV.”

My oldest daughter had just appeared from her bed.

“No, hon, not now.”

I kept reading, now with both daughters snuggled up on the sofa under the blanket.  Boers was writing about his family’s experience of preparing and eating meals at this well-crafted wooden table, a furnishing in his home that almost took on a sacramental quality.

“Dad, I’m hungry.”

That was from my 4-yr old.  If he does not eat within ten minutes of rising bleary-eyed from a night’s sleep, there is a danger that the galaxy might implode.  At least that’s what his demeanor conveys.

I go to the kitchen to make breakfast: chocolate chip pancakes is the Saturday morning standard.  My mood is good.  I am excited about the culture I want to instill in my young family. As I work on the meal, I take glimpses out the window to take in the fresh sunlight hitting the Autumn leaves and the still-green grass.  Boers had installed a window in his kitchen so he could do the same.

“Dad, can we watch something now?”

I give my permission—the tiny toddler, full of warm milk, wanted to watch an episode of Elmo’s World.  It lasts 12 minutes or so… innocent enough, right?

Then I call them for breakfast.  My wife joins us from her activities upstairs, and we all sit around this old wooden table that, as our landlords inform us, used to belong to a well-known Bishop of Leeds.  Butter is smeared, syrup is poured, and conversation begins.

Actually, chaos begins.

Boers is calling for focal practices that cut into our technological/entertainment habits.  Part of the argument is that our lives are stressed, distracted, disjointed, fractured.  We hardly have any time to concentrate and enjoy each others’ company.  We can hardly sit and have a decent dialogue over a table these days with all the buzzing and beeping of our gadgets at the table.

Forget the buzzing and beeping.  I’ve got yipping and yapping.

When we all 6 take our place at that old, wooden table, the sort of conversation and fellowship I envision does not happen.  It is stressed, distracted, disjointed, fractured.  Someone drops a syrup-soaked hunk of pancake on the floor.  The sausage is too hot, someone complains.  The toddler shouts that she is all done, yet she does so while sneaking more bites as if she cannot get enough—she is mad if she gets taken down from her high chair, mad if she does not.  An argument breaks out between the two oldest across the table. A milk cup almost spills. All this happens in one rising swell—not instantaneously.  It just grows and grows until my wife and I are on edge, anxious, frustrated, and so busy attending to the madness that our own pancakes (lovingly riddled with blueberries) get cold.

And you know what?  If I had served the meal in front of the TV, it would have been quiet, relaxed, and argument-free.

Now, our table is not always cacophonous and chaotic.  And my wife and I understand that our children must be meticulously taught to sit quietly and respectfully while “at table.”  That will take years.  Also, Boers is not saying that these focal practices are easy.  In fact, difficulty is an essential ingredient in developing a focal practice: without the challenge, there would be no counteraction against the immediate-access culture of consumerism and technological gadgetry.

But Elmo’s World would have kept our table much quieter, much less stressful.

I am not necessarily disagreeing with Boers.  I like his vision.  I will help promote his vision.  But I do like to bring out the nuances and impracticalities, especially for those of us with small children (which Boers would readily acknowledge, and does so from time to time in his book).

Brewing coffee and warming milk with a bleary-eyed toddler in my arms is a focal practice of sorts.  My arm hurts, and reading with her squirming in my lap can be a real challenge.  I will never trade in those moments, though.

But I thank God for supper in front of the TV on Family Movie Night.

[1] From an interview David Woods had with Borgmann.  See Arthur Boers, Living into Focus: Choosing What Matters in an Age of Distractions (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2012), 21, n. 13.

I led a workshop over the weekend at the Christian New Media and Awards Conference in London.  My topic was “Online Theology”:  can we “do theology” online?  What are the advantages of doing theology via blogging and microblogging?  What are the limitations?  I also asked this: what sort of disciplines and skills should we embrace for doing online theology well?

The issue strikes me as massively important because theology is massively important and because digital media is becoming more and more integrated into our daily (hourly!) lives.

Normally I do my writing on media-theology at www.BigBible.org.uk, but since some of those readers attended the conference, I thought I would open the conversation up here at Hopeful Realism.

First, I have learned from Jason Byassee that we just need to be careful about making broad, sweeping conclusions about the Church and the Digital Age.  The reason is because it is simply too early to assess—see Byassee’s essay for The New Media Project.  His subtitle includes the word  “underdetermined” to express a humble approach at making assessments.  Historians will one day look back on the church’s embrace/rejection/conflicted use of new media from the luxurious vantage point of retrospection.  More definitive conclusions could be made at that point.  For those of us in the midst of these technological and cultural shifts, however, we have to be cautious and observant.  Byassee cites this from a Methodist minister writing in 1850 about the telegraph:

This noble invention is to be the means of extending civilization, republicanism, and Christianity over the earth. It must and will be extended to nations half-civilized, and thence to those now savage and barbarous. Our government will be the grand center of this mighty influence…. The beneficial and harmonious operation of our institutions will be seen, and similar ones adopted. Christianity must speedily follow them, and we shall behold the grand spectacle of a whole world, civilized, republican, and Christian…. Wars will cease from the earth. Men “shall beat their swords into plough shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks’ … then shall come to pass the millennium.

[From Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (New York: Oxford, 2009), 3.]

The “traditional academic form [of doing theology] does not breed conversation, but promotes monologue; it does not foster cross-fertilization of ideas, but reinforces one particular perspective on an issue; it is not open to other voices, but is designed precisely to close them off; and, finally any such discourse is not welcoming to all voices, but privileges a select group who have been properly vetted by the Western academy.”

[Milton Bradley Penner and Hunter Barnes, A New Kind of Conversation: Blogging toward a Postmodern Faith (Milton Keynes, UK; Paternoster, 2006), 1.]

When I took a preaching class in seminary, I never expected it to be such a creative launching pad for me.  We listened and watched all kinds of preaching and preachers and focused on different, and sometimes novel, ways of communicating both clearly and compellingly.  I went on to take another course, with professor Chuck Campbell, on Preaching, the Powers, and Principalities.  It was here that my imagination was further sparked to see and speak to the captivities and spiritual powers at play in our daily lives and in our congregations.  One thing I particularly enjoyed was Chuck’s playfulness; in the midst of incredibly serious material he never seemed to take himself too seriously. 

When Baylor University Press sent me a copy of Chuck’s (along with co-author Johan Cilliers) newest preaching book, Preaching Fools: The Gospel as a Rhetoric of Folly, I took the opportunity to sit down with him to discuss. Throughout the book there is a notable chorus, “The gospel is foolishness.  Preaching is folly.  Preachers are fools.”  This is a fairly unusual, possibly threatening, but certainly scriptural, statement for the average pastor.  An odd line in our job descriptions.  The book certainly struck a chord in regards to preparing and delivering sermons, but also, because of its surprisingly multimedia nature, it struck a chord in regards to the arts and their ability to embody and communicate this “gospel foolishness.”

In today’s post, Chuck speaks about preaching’s ability to unsettle us, put us in a middle ground, and change our perception.  At one point he mentioned the book’s very title changing before his eyes: from a noun to a verb, being the fool to being fooled.

The second post explores some of the similarities and engagements the book has with the arts.  We wind up talking about everything from the music of Derek Webb to Stephen Colbert to the upcoming American presidential election.

Hopeful Realism: Some of your interest and expertise lies in what Scripture calls the “principalities and powers.”  How have those interests developed in your work over the years?

Chuck Campbell:  The work with the powers began when I was doing a lot of ministry with homeless people in Atlanta.  I heard them use this language.  I was, a full day to a day-and-a-half, overnight sometimes, on the streets with homeless people.  I got to know some of the people and they would use this language.  This material began to make sense of what I was seeing…nobody wants there to be homelessness, but it just kept getting worse.

Secondly, it started making sense “of me,” in addition to “to me.”  It helped me understand my own sinfulness in a different way, in a kind of complicity and captivity rather than just getting up in the morning and saying, “I’m gonna go do something evil.”  People in our churches don’t say that.  They never leave and say, “Thanks for the sermon, now I’m gonna go do something evil.”

So it pushed me to explore that material as a way of thinking both theologically and ethically about my own understanding of sin, what I was seeing in my work with homeless people, and to a little lesser extent in ministry on Death Row.  It was never theoretical to start with.  As I kept reading and working it really became a focus in my preaching work.  The new book is still dealing with it, but in some different ways.

HR: Where did this new angle, foolishness and folly, come from?

CC:  Even in the Word Before the Powers there is a section on lampooning.  Someone mentioned that I should look at jesters because that’s really what I was talking about in many ways.  Then three things happened.  I had a sabbatical and I read Dostoyevsky, who does a whole lot with “holy fools” in his novels.  I started reading material on the history of jesters, tricksters, and holy fools.  And I came across some material on the famous First Corinthians text on the foolishness of preaching [1 Corinthians 1:18-31].  These things started to come together.  So this really did grow out of the powers material, one way of dealing with the powers being a sort of jester-like, lampooning fashion.  And also there was a sense that potentially that was what Paul was doing when he was interrupting the work of the powers in First Corinthians.

HR: I was surprised how multimedia and especially how visual this book felt considering it is a preaching book.  Right out of the gates, the beautiful cover, Picasso’s Crucifixion featuring Don Quixote, seems to set a sort of vision for the book.  Then we’re introduced to a phrase like “bifocal vision.”

CC:  I need to give credit to my co-author Johan, who is responsible for much of the visual arts in the book.  He is an extraordinary artist himself.  He always writes with some sort of visual art.  I contributed some of the political cartoons.  I’m excited it turned out this way.  We wanted it to be a very interdisciplinary book with visual art, literature, cartoons and everything else in it, because that’s what preaching is.  That’s what we have to do.  We are always drawing on all these different pieces, even when we’re not Shakespeare scholars or experts.

The “bifocal vision” is a term from New Testament scholar J. Louis Martyn.  It’s been a very helpful term for me and as you see in the book, it begins to shape the way that we look at the rhetoric of preaching as a kind of “bivocal” rhetoric that is trying to do orally what this bifocal vision does visually.  Martyn uses it as an apocalyptic understanding of the gospel, especially in Paul, where the New Age breaks in, interrupts, invades, the old age.  And yet of course the Old Age has not died and the New Age has not yet fully come.  So the challenge is to be able to see both things at once.

Sometimes people might use the bifocal vision to be like glasses where you see close up and then you look with a longer vision for the fulfillment.  As you may or may not have noticed in the book, we don’t take that route.  We’re looking at both at once, here and now.  In my mind, this is a more apocalyptic way, where the New Creation is already here; you can’t always see it but you can’t ignore it in the Old Age when you are seeing the pieces of it already here.

It is certainly a growing edge in the book: the rhetoric of preaching being “bivocal.”  Having to say two things at once, both the Old Age and the New, without letting go of either one in a real sense.  As I’ve thought about the sorts of stories and example that have been most powerful to me, they tend to be those kind.  Another aspect of the bivocal rhetoric is simply to keep things from being settled.  Where things are clear, rigid, and tied down.  Some of the forms like metaphor keep things open, which is characteristic of this life between the Ages.  This space between the Ages.

HR: Space seems to be another major motif of the book; this middle ground of “liminality.”

I underlined while reading, “there is no separating the folly from the wisdom or the scandal from the gospel.  Jesus too keeps us unsettled; he invites us on the Way, he calls us to discipleship at the threshold between the ages and bids us to follow -and preach – one whom we can never master or control, but who ever remains elusive and disruptive.”[1]

CC: This is a huge growing edge for me.  And I’m still trying to live into it and figure out what it means for preaching.  I preached on Tuesday in chapel and these sermons are still sweating blood trying to figure out how to do it.  One of the things that has happened as a result of this book and might be an important word for a lot of us in the church today, is beginning to think of the gospel not as something that gives us a solid security or clarity or ties things down, but really as the gospel itself keeping us unsettled and “on the way.”

We live in a culture and a time where things are quite unsettled.  So many cultures, and the church itself, is going through a kind of liminal phase.  We’re not sure where things are headed.  The danger there is to really want to assert and reassert a kind of reactionary clarity that grows out of fear.  So I think one of the subtexts that surfaces is that Christians don’t have to be afraid of these times.  We can live into them.  It’s really our space, this sort of unsettled space.  And we’re following the One who we can trust and we can see even in this tumult, the New Age breaking in.

This may not be new to anyone else.  It strikes me that it’s often assumed that Christianity provides the security, clarity, finality, solidity…but I’m beginning to think it may be something different.  Which might be some of the best, good news to free us from our fears that we can have as a Church.

HR: Along these lines, fragmentation is another dominant theme in the book.  There’s a sense that our view of fragmentation should not just lie in something being broken, but as some sort of artifact of the future.  That “faith means not to be in tact.”[2]  This is really challenging to me, but also sort of threatening.

CC:  It’s unsettling.  Another facet to fragmentation is being part of the Church where we’re not ever whole apart from these other fragments.  That’s where some of my colleague’s writing in the book on ubuntu keeps that kind of dynamic between the individual and community going in some interesting ways.

[Note: The following is taken from the draft of my forthcoming book 'TheoMedia'...]

Jesus quoted Deuteronomy more than any other Old Testament book. I was recently reading to my two oldest kids from Jesus’ temptation scene in Luke’s Gospel and decided I would inspire them with this: “when Jesus was assaulted by evil, he quoted Deuteronomy.”

For children who regularly fight imaginary bad guys and fairy tale beasts with toy swords and homemade archery kits, they did not seem very inspired. An old book they can hardly pronounce and probably cannot spell seemed like shoddy weaponry should a dragon draw nigh.

My wife and I have explained to our children that there are dark spiritual forces out there tempting us to do wrong. But the confrontation between Jesus and Satan in Luke 4 seemed a bit absurd in their ears: “Dad, if Jesus had not eaten in forty days, then why would it have been a sin to turn the stone into bread?”

The second temptation caused less consternation. Gaining the kingdoms of the world in exchange for worshiping the devil was perceived as clearly wrong. But along with the conviction that worshiping anyone but God is bad, my oldest son was just as disturbed by the fact that Satan may have been guilty of false advertising. He knows the serpent of old to be a renown trickster.  Maybe he did not control all those kingdoms like he made out. My son smelled something suspicious, like when a friend promises a candy bar she does not actually have on her person.

The final temptation as Luke has it (Matthew follows a slightly different order) made no sense whatsoever to my kids. They could not quite figure out why jumping off the Temple heights would be a temptation. Surely Jesus would not fall for something that ridiculous. Only a fool would purposely hurl oneself off a bike or out of a tree, much less off a building onto stone pavement. As far as they were concerned, there was nothing heroic in Jesus’ valiant refusal . He was just using the sort of common sense they had learned from toddlerhood. Even their 4-yr old little brother knew not to jump off high places.

I almost explained that Jesus was actually resisting the temptation to pull off a spectacular stunt in the most public and religiously significant place in Palestine, and in so doing producing a grandstand media-event that would have resulted in a supernatural display of angelic powers (as Satan put it) which would instantly guarantee Jesus celebrity status.

I just stuck with a simple summary of what is arguably scene’s main point: Though Israel forgot Deuteronomy, Jesus did not.

Don’t forget Deuteronomy. It doesn’t sound like the typical lesson from a devotional or sermon. But actually, forgetting Deuteronomy, setting aside the media of God’s words, is why Israel and eventually Judah fell into rot and ruin.

The good news (“Gospel”) is this: though we forget the words of God, though we forsake him and fail to heed his commands, Jesus does not.  Jesus remembers Deuteronomy.

For our series on “Loving the Church” in all its grit, grime and glory, we had some exchanges with Jason Byassee.  Before accepting an appointment as Senior Minister at Boone United Methodist Church (North Carolina), Jason worked at Duke Divinity School, heading up their Center for Theology, Writing and Media.  Since a lot of our posts here at Hopeful Realism have prodded and poked around with the idea of the pastor-scholar or pastor-theologian (most recently, see here and here), we were intrigued with the news of the job shift—it is not everyday that someone leaves a coveted academic post at a prestigious university for the pastoral trials of the parish.  We interviewed Jason last year (click here) in what turned out to be one of my top five favorite posts of 2011.  We thought it would be fun and helpful to check in and find out how plying the fused craft of theology/writing/ministry was faring….

Writing and Reading as a Pastor

HR: How have the past several months as a pastor shaped your writing?  Any change in style, content, length… or changes in topics of focus? 

I certainly have a less romantic view of the parish! The small church cured me of that in one way (I wrote about this in The Gifts of the Small Church), but a largish church (1400 members, 700 on Sunday) cures in another way. There are more critics. There are also more selfless servants. And those are often the same people! Sunday is more of a performance, and that’s not a bad thing. We can do more in mission. We’re also a tall steeple in a town that’s still Christendom enough that being a visible member can help you advance in your career. Odd—but there’s nothing to be done about that other than to receive it as a gift. We’re in a university town with an entrepreneurial spirit. Those are all gifts, all potentially dangerous, potentially sources of grace.

I’m struck by how much of my job is leading staff. I have no idea how to do that other than not to do what supervisors I’ve had did that I disliked. Of course merely avoiding things is no way positively to lead. I find myself faking it far more often than I’m comfortable with. But lots of senior pastors tell me they’re doing the same.

I find my view of theological education growing. Smart people are right to demand sophisticated intellectual engagement that respects and takes them seriously. But academia often serves up inside baseball debates when it thinks it’s being intellectual. Who has the patience for that outside the guild? Folks want preaching that engages their life with the treasures of the church and harsh realities of the world and takes their minds seriously. Some sui generis geniuses can do that, but that’s not most of us.

I’m sure all that’s shaped my writing some. It comes in smaller bursts of time, certainly. To be honest I know what I’m doing when I write but not when I’m leading, so writing can be an escape in the negative sense for me.

HR: How has serving as a pastor expanded (or constricted) your reading and studying? 

I find I read more fiction. I’m not sure why exactly. I wish I had a theory that I found narrative helpful in reading scripture or reading the congregation or working with words but it might just be fun. I certainly read more commentaries and sermons. When I get ready to preach I see if I have a sermon on a text and am sure to read it. If I’m being extra diligent I’ll read commentary on it, but not always. Modern commentary always feels the need to act more clever than anything that came before, so I get annoyed and distracted by that.

I also read things parishioners give me. Not email forwards usually, but books, and I try to work what I learn there into sermons. I both want to show them we can discover things together and I want genuinely to know what they’re reading and thinking about.

HR: How does your process of sermon-writing differ from the research and writing you have done for more academic purposes?

More is at stake. A sermon declares the word of God in a specific time and place, a word that judges and saves, contradicts and makes whole. Academic work also has its place in God’s purposes, but less is up for grabs. It’s second-order discourse (borrowing from Robert Jenson here): it offers reflection on scripture or church at a remove, potentially correcting or encouraging things being said in first-order discourse like sermon or church teaching. But if an academic piece gets things wrong, who cares?

That said, ideas do have legs. Terrible theologies of suffering or salvation or politics get disseminated from a variety of sources and can do harm. I’m also aware of my own post-liberal training more than I have been. The temptation is to try to turn people into liberals before they can be turned into post-liberals! Of course there’s no credit for doing that. The better goal is to approach Jesus together and see how we’re changed for having done so.

It certainly matters who I imagine will be listening on Sundays. I often find myself thinking how specific people will hear things. I hope that’s not selling out on the gospel—I believe it’s not, but it seems unavoidable anyway.
HR: You have devoted considerable amounts of time and energy to studying Patristic exegesis.  Do the approaches of those early writers on Scripture give shape to your own exegetical practices as a pastor?

They must, but I’m not sure how. Augustine is rigorously textual in his preaching. Graham Ward calls this a “letteral” sense—Augustine’s paying exacting attention to the letter, but not doing what we moderns think of as “literal” reading. Scripture has a fulsome sense, it includes history and letter and language, all that is remote. Yet it’s also brought near us in Christ, as he leads us in discipleship now. The fathers know this: that the bible is both far away and unbearably near. Monica is a good image for Augustine’s preaching. She’s uneducated but fiercely intelligent, pious and superstitious in one way, in another dramatically dedicated to Jesus in ways that affected generations. My parishioners are far more educated than Monica in a formal sense but not in theology—otherwise it’s a perfect bullseye.

Media as a Pastor
As a Research Fellow with the New Media Project, I know that you spend a lot of time thinking about media.  How are social media incorporated in your pastoral ministry?

Not near as well as they should be, but better than they were when I arrived. We had a 90’s era flash presentation on site that just screamed “dated.” Now we have a pretty nice looking site, put together by a lay staffer and good consultant. We have a Facebook presence where we had none before. We’re not using it very well yet. I’m struck anew by how difficult it is to connect to people in social media as an institution. They work so much better for individuals. I’ve got 2500 Facebook friends; something like 160 people “like” Boone UMC. So we’re trying to ask people what I ought to preach on etc. But it’s slow.

Personally I find it much easier to connect to people via text message or Facebook than it ever was with the tools around when I was last in the parish—phone and email. I like praying on people’s Facebook wall on their birthdays. Social media is a great way to connect with first-time visitors. All that is borrowed from folks we studied in the New Media Project. I like Tony Lee’s language—pastor of Cathedral of Hope AME in DC. He says new media increases his “pastoral touches.” Sure enough—folks I’d never connect with in person, who don’t elbow their way through the greeting line to get in the pastor’s attention—I can connect with really well digitally. It only works if face-to-face and social media work integrally.

But I don’t claim to have this figured out at Boone UMC in the slightest.

[Part 2 of the interview will be up in a couple of days on " The Rift between Church and Academy and the Pastor Theologian".... ]

Here are Jason’s books if any of you are interested—