Oh what a week......

I'm finally doing it. I spoke with my boss and told him that I was being called to fulltime study and would be leaving my position. He was not surprised, nor was he in a hurry to set an exit date. Mary and I put in our firm request for on campus housing, got Aidan registered for Kindergarten and Mary has applied for her Massachussets Nursing License. Now I just need to rent our house, have the mother of all garage sales, finish this semester and June term before moving.

On another positive note, my two nephews were Baptized on Easter and most of my family was in attendance. Imagine if you will, six boys ranging in age from 11 months to 9 years pumped up on sugar courtesy of the EasterBunny and the loot collected during three egg hunts! We had a ball! One thing became abundantly clear to me. I need our liturgy as a fundamental component of my worship life. In spite of how wonderful their congregaton and Pastor are, the Presbyterian Church is not where I belong. Thank God for the Episcopal Church.

Religion Online

I was somewhat surprised to see that the general consensus of two reports published by the Pew Internet & American Life Project (here & here), illustrate that the majority of internet users seeking religious and spiritual information are in fact tied to traditional faith organizations. In particular, I was struck by this conclusion in the second article:




“Rather than providing a safe haven for religious experimentation for those disaffected from religious traditions, therefore, the Internet seems to be fostering the development of religious and spiritual practices that are nonetheless at some distance from the traditions of organized religion. These practices are more personally expressive and more individually oriented and, consistent with contemporary research on trends in American religion, they are more likely to take place among those who have a commitment to traditional religious organizations than among those outside of those traditions.” p. 20




As we have discussed ways to define a new vision for and grow the church of the 21st Century, greater expansion of the use of the internet to appeal to broader numbers, including the unchurched, seemed a logical choice. Especially when looking at current forms of online community and communication tools. Given the research presented, it now would seem that one is better off leveraging the internet to develop enrichment programs that compliment the traditional methods of worship and enhance community development within the established religious or sprititual community, rather than looking to draw in net new membership. This is not necessarliy a bad thing as it is easier to define your desired target audience within the context of a traditional religious setting.



I do wonder whether the researchers took the time to better understand the reasons behind some of the data. For instance, in the second report, the primary demographics of online faithful was defined as follows:



“The online faithful are somewhat more likely than the overall Internet population to be women, to be white, to be between ages 50 and 64, to be college educated (49% have college or graduate degrees), to be married, to live in households earning $75,000 or more, and to live in the South and Midwest. The online faithful are less likely than the overall Internet population to be between the ages of 18 and 29, to be minorities, to live in households earning less than $30,000, or to live in the Northeast.” P. 5


What is behind the numbers? Why is this group more white, more female, more educated, and more resourced than that of the traditional internet users? Are access to resources or time available to be on line contributing factors? Is it a matter that traditional black denominations did not have resources available on line at the time of this study? Are these numbers heavily skewed by the Evangelicals who participated in the surveys? According to these numbers, even I have a few more years to go before I hit this demographic (I'll leave it to you to guess which factor(s)I have yet to hit :-)).



I'm a stickler for trying to include both quantitative and qualitative datapoints in research that I conduct in order to present a broader picture of what's happening in a given situation. I think the 2004 study did a much better job of that than the 2001 study. However, it is from the 2004 study that my questions come from. I was also dissapointed that there was not enough common data between the two studies to be able to draw correlations or investigate trends over a period of time. Nor could I find anything on the Pew internet website to suggest that a followup study had been completed. I think a trend analysis would be exceptionally helpful to understand changing behaviors of the "online faithful." I think that it would also be valuable to expand upon page 20 of this article and actually commit to a best practice report of what resources are being available on line and how people are responding to them. It goes without saying that the open sharing of information, successess, and failures is of tremendous value.



At the end of the day the question remains, how do we draw folks back into the church, or perhaps better stated, how do we expand our church communities? My take away on this is that our best recruitment tools are still ourselves. Our future growth will remain dependant on how we as Christians continue to interact with others. Are we the best example of the Gospels that we can be in our everyday interactions? Are we continuing grow in our own faith so that we can continue to grow with others? Are we able to have FUN in our Christian communities and want others to spend time with us? Are we providing the opportunity for theological and spiritual growth to our congregants? Even though the studies presented are obsolete as is almost anything on line anymore, it is very realistic to enhance people's experience of God through the use of online tools.

TE 41

I have made a living for many years now, by evaluating and improving business processes for clients and finding technology solutions to support those processes. Another key aspect of my work is to help avoid the temptation of clients to implement technology that may be appealing, and then re craft a business process to work with the "new toy." At the end of the day, the goal is for my clients to enjoy more effective and efficient processes that cost less.

On the one hand, I see much the same goal for Theological Education. In this case the question is how to deliver academic offerings with access to more material to a greater audience in a distributed fashion. Technology certainly is a vital tool to support that.
The one thing that I am grappling with is how to address the vast cultural differences that exist within the student body, where technology has very different meaning ranging from a series of tools, to the main medium and mechanism for communication.

More cohesive thoughts on that shortly, I hope:-)

Frustration in cyberland....

So, as I reported to my classmates two weeks ago, my venture into cyberland ahs been frustrating at best. Specifically, my attempt to engage in Second Life. I have now spent countless hours trying to simply access the system. The application crashes without even displaying the title page of the application. Now mind you, I have spent nearly twenty years in a technical field, so technical troubleshooting is not a foreign concept to me provided that I have access to anythng like decent information to troubleshoot with! After nearly eight hours over several days of searching through the knowledgebase and FAQ data base, I was almost satisfied with the notion that my problems stemmed from an unsupported video card. That's cool, I'm not keen on the idea of buying a new video card, but I selected my laptop as a business app, not a gaming unit.

So this weekend, I finally had access to the "family PC" for more than 15 minutes. I have now wasted another two hours trying to set up on my desktop, which does have a graphics card that is apparently supported. This time I receive a DNS connection error, Grand! After following the suggested points to ensure that I have a good internet connection and thatthe secondlife site is in fact operational, I'm told to submit a suport ticket. Great......

I do this only to receive a message back a few minutes later, that my support question will not be reviewed because I am not a paying subscriber and I actually iput what the problem really was rather than entering a "special question."

So, am I simply so out of touch with reality that
a) I can no longer understand the most basic application troubleshooting tips?
b) my expectations around customer support are wildly outdated by hoping to actually communicate live with somebody to resolve an issue? PS Chat rooms are more than acceptable for this.
c) my experiences in hoping to entice a casual user into becoming a paying subscriber by ensuring a positive inagural experience are now out of vogue?

I really want to engage in this experience for my final project. I'm just stubborn enough and the preverbial "they" have ticked me off just enough, that I will get Second Life working if it kills me! I just hope that there is something redeeming in the experience once I get there.