IMPRESSIONS OF A SOCIAL MEDIA WORKSHOP #2

We had the second day of our #web2kerk (web2church) / Facebook course yesterday. The second day went extremely easy, if you take the technical stuff into account. Since @Sean Burger of Ipwebcraft set up the WLAN and got the glitches sorted to get every participant online on day one, day two literally was a matter of switching on your laptop and seeing that you are immediately and automatically connected to the Internet. (Sean, I love you, Man!)

The content of the second day focused on enabling the participants to create a Facebook Page for their organisation. We also spent some time on RSS Feeds and how to keep track of blogs one wants to follow. We also talked about setting up and maintaining a blog.

A large part of the conversation focused on what changes the church must make to reach a generation of people who grow up in this social media context. I stand amazed at the capacity of specifically "older" ministers of religion to accept a fundamental shift in our culture and initiate The part I found the most constructive was the theological discussion that was generated about processes that are necessary to adapt their ministry style. The hearts and willingness are there.

The challenge, however, is with the ability to live in this virtual social media world and still develop meaningful personal relationships with people. It also became clear to me that a radical rethinking of doing church is necessary. Congregations are traditionally organised as centripetal mechanisms - attracting people to the centre of its activities (most often the worship services) while the virtual social media world is centrifugal networks, scattering all over the place with no clear structure or hierarchy, or loyalty.

The general conclusion among the group that attended this workshop is the need to create more theological conversations on this subject. We were in agreement that the purpose of our ministries still centre around Christ and bringing the message of his redemption to the world and advancing his kingdom on earth.

The only sad thing is that we couldn't end our workshop with the beach party on Clifton beach as we so eloquently planned while developing our Facebook page and creating our only event! Perhaps it's because the pastor in the service of the synod (@Gielie Loubser) - who helped to arrange the workshop - didn't reply on the tweet we sent him to arrange the hubbly bubbly we wanted as part of our beach party! (I still want to know how he would react to THAT one!). :-))