Category: New media

Google+?

I’m watching the slow launch of Google+ with very cautious optimism. On the one hand, Google has a bad habit of introducing a new product, handling it badly, and then abruptly abandoning it; remember Google Wave? On the other hand, we desperately need a solid competitor to Facebook, a social networking product which is buggy, clunky, and not at all trustworthy.

Those of us in the religion world already know that we will be using social networking tools more and more as time goes on — it would be really nice if we had additional social networking options, and it would be even nicer if there were popular social networking options that were well-designed. Facebook is not particularly well designed; it’s better than MySpace, perhaps, but not by much. Will Google+ provide a better-designed social networking option?

More than a sermon

Scott Wells has started me thinking about what I’d like to do to introduce an online component to sermons. Here are some preliminary ideas:

  • On Thursday (the day I usually write a sermon), post a reading and a question for reflection on a sermon blog; the reading would be used during the service three days hence.
  • On Sunday morning, just before preaching, post the reading text of the sermon on the same sermon blog. The sermon would have embedded hyperlinks, and bibliographic references for further reading as relevant.
  • In addition to comments on the sermon blog, the order of service would give a hashtag for a Twitter conversation. The sermon would be streamed live online, so shut-ins and people who were traveling could hear the sermon, and participate through Twitter and online comments.
  • After the Sunday service, comments would remain open on the sermon blog, and I’d join in the online conversation when it made sense to do so.

This would fit into my normal weekly work flow: I have often posted a reading or reflection question a few days before I preach a sermon, and I already post a text of my sermons online before I preach them. At present, I don’t have comments enabled on my sermon blog (because I got too many comments by evangelical Christians and Hindus who wanted to argue without listening to anyone else), but it wouldn’t be a big deal to enable comments once again. The only thing listed above that I can’t do right now is stream the sermon live online (yes, I know I’m at a Silicon Valley church, but we don’t have the volunteers who could oversee the streaming, and our Internet connection is woefully slow). And for you diehard Facebook people, there could be a Facebook page with the sermon blog’s RSS feed.

The real question is: would anyone actually participate in a Twitter conversation, or read the sermon online and comment on it? Would you? Or is there some other online enrichment strategy that I’m missing?

Worship can erupt anywhere….

Check out this new blog on the Fellowship of Fools, which is “a new congregation, a congregation without walls, a home for Fools of the Diaspora, existing within the structure of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.” It also involves chocolate kisses, flash mob prayers, and blowing bubbles. And what I want from this blog is lots of photos of their “worship which can erupt anywhere.”

Andy Warhol Robot, Chattanooga, Tennessee

Andy Warhol Robot by Nam June Paik

We spent last night in Chattanooga, and this morning we decided to visit the Hunter Museum of American Art. “Andy Warhol Robot,” a 1994 sculpture by Nam June Paik on loan from the Kunstmuseum, greeted us as we entered the musuem. The main body of the robot is made out of cabinets of early television sets; the original cathode ray tubes (CRTs) have been replaced by newer CRTs which display short video clips by Paik. Other robot body parts include cameras, film projectors (at least that’s what I think they are) canned soup, and a Brillo box sculpture made by Andy Warhol.

As we were leaving the museum, a woman and two boys, aged about five and seven, were standing in front of the robot. The two boys were looking up at it with great interest, and as we walked by, I could overhear one of the boys telling the woman some story that involved explosions and either monsters or robots.