If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even lessWe the church have often stood at the dividing of the ways, the signposts Change and Irrelevance offering us our choices. We rightly say, “We dare not change our message!” and, “Our message is forever relevant!” and then march down the road to apparent or effective irrelevance.—General Eric Shinseki, Chief of Staff, U. S. Army[cited in Movable Theoblogical: Change and Irrelevance]
We sense dimly that we are like Tolkien's “Elven-wise, Lords of the Eldar from beyond the furthest seas.” We “who [dwell] in the Blessed Realm live at once in both worlds, and against Seen and Unseen [we] have great power.” But we forget that we must speak the language of men (and women), and that language is in flux. Our message is unchanging and ever-relevant: but we must translate it into the language (and culture) of our times, or appear to be irrelevant.
Movable Theoblogical: Change and Irrelevance goes on to sayThere may be no “easier response”, but we I'm not sure we're called to an easy response. We have to sweat, and pray, and ache, to become a “safe place” to enter: to remove every obstacle to our hearers' receiving the message except the scandal of the cross.When Churches and , worse, agencies of the Church charged with providing resources for those churches, flat out fail to acknowledge the need and desire of people to connect on issues and share rants and all manner of "passionate involvements", then irrelevance rules their approach.
Old Saint George has recognized the "time" ; the "kairos" represented in the possibilities for online community, and that it is undoubtedly TIME now to engage in projects that respond to this. To be a "Great Good Place" requires of us that we become an "easy place" to be heard. And there is no easier response than to jump in and build applications which emanate "exploration" and "invitation" and "affirmation". This is much of what it means to be Church. To be a place in which passions which emanate from a sense of CALL are explored and are the source of dialogue about what can be done, and how our God-given gifts equip us for it.
So, where does blogging come in? The web? We are called to be communicators, a picture book that leads people to the Living Book by way of the written book. If we can find a way to engage our contemporaries through a weblog, and it does not pull us away from caring for the poor and afflicted and enslaved (“But…my blog is my ministry!”)…then blog on!
Posted by ronlusk at November 3, 2003 07:43 AMRon! Glad to see you back! I found you via a Trackback (isn't MT great? Isn't trackback a great feature?)
On your comment regarding "easy response" , that was a correct "but" to add. What I meant by "easy" was in terms of "obvious"; "no-brainer"; not at all to say that what responses we make are easy to implement. It does take work. That's my beef with the Church. It doesn't see , for the most part, how this stuff is worth the effort. It is basically clueless about the fact that there are SO MANY CONVERSATIONS being initiated and carried on via this medium, and that things such as Trackback add new dimensions to the "immediacy" of "distributed" conversations.
It is really good to see you back in the blog world. I'm writing this to you today from Old Saint George in Cincinnati, my new "place of possibilities" and the best headquarters I'v found in terms of its being a center for "connections" to all sorts of "Place-based" communities, with the great potential for being a resource to all these communities in helping them expand their reach into the online community.
Dale
Posted by: Dale Lature at November 3, 2003 10:35 AMYes, Dale, I actually saved the article twice, in order to make sure that the TrackBack ping worked (it timed out the first round). I'm trying to promote this medium for my church, as well as some other organizations I work with.
Delighted to be in touch again.
Posted by: Ron at November 3, 2003 11:06 AM