Dale Lature: Theoblogical

jordoncooper.com weblog: "I am disappointed with the disproportionate number of sites that discuss "post-modern ministry", compared to those actually that minister online. In my opinion, only a handful of websites or churches do spiritual work online (MethodX) and Beliefnet. Instead most Christian web sites either communicate to other ministers (The Ooze), provide spiritual information (Crosswalk), or service bricks and mortar ministries (For ministry) or Willow Creek). Most of the content is provided by well-known writers that are part of the Christian publishing industry. There are few alternative voices. I want to provide a publishing platform that serves everyday Christians who like to write and desire to participate in reasoned dialogue about meaningful issues."

Not Synagogues/ churches IN cyberspace but rather
synagogues/churches FOR cyberspace

An acquaintance from another online community (Brainstorms), to which I belong, posted the following (used with permission from the author) in my discussion there on "Online Theological Community"):

There are basically three clusters of themes that are at issue for religious institutions: 1. priestly 2. pastoral 3.prophetic how each is related to in cyberspace online is quite different. In the Synagogue there are at least the 1.bet midrash-- the place of learning 2. Bet knesset-- the place of gathering 3 bet tefillah- the place of prayer /worship each is different and each may need a specialized form of cyber-attention. another thought- Are we dealing with trying to figure out what in cyberspace is like a bricks and morter church/synagogue and try to more or less emulate the classical model? OR is this to think about what is special to the cyberspace situation and design a space for it that would be unique. not Synagogues/ churches IN cyberspace but rather synagogues/churches FOR cyberspace, quite a different way of dealing with these questions. This is also not at all new. after the destruction of the Jewish temple the Jews and the church had to figure out DeNovo a new system -- we are in an analogous situation. It seems to me that the issue is not space at all but what we do in cyberia is now a function of an emerging LOGOS (not the word like this ) of John 1:1 but the original meaning of Logos as an intelligent being in itself that is more or less independeant of physical space altogether. more a function of the Noosphere FOR cyberia. (Moshe Dror)

Moshe, I wish I had been checking this last 11 days, because that's a dandy post. I would say that in answer to part 3, the second OR is how I see this question directed, which is, as you say, "to think about what is special to the cyberspace situation and design a space for it that would be unique" "not Synagogues/ churches IN cyberspace but rather synagogues/churches FOR cyberspace" is another excellent distinction. I have to go to work tomorrow early, so I will send a reminder to my email there so I will get back to this. And then I will run on over to 344 and go through that thread. I was on vacation last week and had little opportunity to login and browse other than email. Great obervations!

As soon as I began to see the form and the format and flow of the Weblog/Blogger genre, I knew that I was seeing a sub-revolution within the older, now more tamed Internet. It is a ray of hope for me, especially after reading Lessig's "The Future of Ideas", to see another outlet for expression being made more accessible to all levels of Web-saviness. Of course, with my interests in how all this affects the Theological Community, I have been drawn in and spend my evenings combing around the Weblog world with a wonder that I don't recall since firing up my first Mosaic session and browsing around the Web. My church is one with a very large per-capita involvement in political or social issues, and so many members circulate emails and website sightings that deal with areas of their concerns. The Weblog provide an ideal "storage" and "enabling" of disseminating this kind of information, and with the ability to create Multi-author Weblogs (like in Radio's "Categories") and pull in rss feeds from other webloggers into one place, a Church Community weblog can be established. We are convening a small Website committee to help me with my Web publishing tasks for the Church, and I am intending to introduce them to the idea. I also see coming a Community Server idea that would not only host a "Church information site" but a series of member blogs (There is a little litany at our church where the speaker says "I am a COG", and the people say "A What?" and the speaker says "A COG; A Child of God"......and last Sunday when I heard it, my thinking lately immersed with weblogging, I thought "a COG Blog"; that would be a good service to provide, as a way to express, in the words of the members, something of the flavor of the community.

This seems to follow the idea that the question Moshe raised above where he says:

is this to think about what is special to the cyberspace situation and design a space for it that would be unique. not Synagogues/ churches IN cyberspace but rather synagogues/churches FOR cyberspace, quite a different way of dealing with these questions

It seems to take web form and function and present us with how what the Church is doing could utilize that space and its available functions. The personal story and the ideas/causes/concerns to which they naturally want to link themselves is a clean and comfortable fit for the Blogging phenomenon. (btw, until I learn better, I generally use the terms Blogging and Weblogging intercahngable, although I get the impression that some don't like Blogger.com and the wave of "non-weblog-like" things it has spawned posing as weblogs, but calling themselves Blogs......I don't know, but I'm just excited about it all)

Eastgate Systems, Inc: " "...the primary source for serious hypertext" -- Robert Coover, The New York Times Book Review"

Weblogging is like conversation

I was thinking about a couple of acquaintances I have that I have (with one of them) suggested that they would make excellent and popular bloggers, due to their quick wit and oft entertaining reactions to things.

They replied that two things deter them......that they don't want to look at a computer when they get home, and even if they did, their connection is so slow that they find it painful.

I think that one major culprit here is the cluelessness of the group they work for (who do a website aimed at a highly likely to blog audience). Further, any employee of a web enterprise of any sorts needs to be given the tools to check in on their work from home.....especially if they hope to engender a community that , by nature and by neccessity, have to be open and active beyond the 9 to 5 hours. At least here, I get subsidy for my cable modem connection. And for a Church related web-centric enterprise? There's got to be some involvement in the online world as a resident, not as people who MUST be there to know what the hell's going on, but as people who are conversant, active, and somewhat intune with the cyberculture of the customers they seek to attract.

Then you throw the phenomenon of bloggin into the mix, and you add on to that the 4 or 5 years it usually takes for Church organizations in general to notice what's going on right under their freakin' noses, and you get the usual, behind the times, when are they gonna freakin' wake up kind of a feeling. Yeah, just a fad (which is what I heard daily for 5 years in church circles about the Web), and already getting that kind of a reaction (if not the very words themselves) about weblogging. I'm not talking about people to whom I have only recently mentioned my fascination with it, and haven't yet had the time or occasion to dive in yet, but from the top, who still seem to operate from a broadcast, print publication mode of production where it takes months to get something into publically consummable format. Anything that doesn't lend itself to being sent through multiple channels is suspect (like message boards and now weblogs).

Alas, the trials and frustrations of early adoption (and lack of support to be such)

Theoblogian : Bold letters in th equote below are mine......I found this reference about AKMA, who I just saw having a discussion with Dave Weinberger about hermeneutics....interesting......so the term theoblog is out there in use........I promise I didn't steal it......it just came naturally

Connect & Empower: "I bring this up because, while he has not installed the nifty little BlogAmp tool I blogged earlier, our ever-resourceful, never-at-a-loss theoblogian AKMA has graciously opened his playlists to us in a feature he has dubbed the "Dave Rogers Music Alert" (or "DRMA"). "

As to my definition last night of "theoblogical", it's not just how blogging helps us do theology; it's more like "How blogging IS engaging in doing theology. Posting thoughts backed up by links to supporting or related material, or posting thouights spurred by a provoking article or item someone else has "blogged"; these all open up the conversation, and once we bring God and what the hell we think is going on (or "how this IS or IS NOT "as it would be in heaven", or "what is the expression of this in a Kingdom Of God context?")

It seems weblogs do help us with this. There are software tools that help us set up these linking and news aggregating scenarios that help us "organize" our array of items from which we can tell our story to the world through sharing random glimpses we get.

I emailed Jordan:

Jordan,

Loved your article! [Ian's Messy Desk], to which I have subscribed, popped that entry up on my News Feed tonight, and I was pumped! I gotta write this guy! I want to invite you to explore a few blurbs on my blog, for we have a lot in common in that we both got captured by the insights into the "conversation" that the Internet has renewed by our "market" out there. Amen to the impersonal, informational Church websites that don;t sound like the dynamic, caring, fun people who make up many of those Church communities who , in ignorance of the conversation people seek via the Net, shovel out brochureware. I am in the process of trying to convince my Luddite-leaning Church members here that Church Websites should be about telling our story, not regurgitating our schedule. Nobody wants to come to be "in Church", they want to come to be "in Church with people who they are comfortable with".

Jordan, come and visit me, man! We got a lot in common.

Blogging: Advice for Church Websites.

Jordon Cooper writes:

"Several months ago I wrote an article in Next-Wave that talked about evangelism and communicating to an increasingly net-literate lifestyle. Since then I downloaded a plethora of e-mail soliciting my opinion on their local church website. Many of those local church sites got posted on jordoncooper.com. Recently I took time to review the list and two things caught my attention. Almost all of them are very well designed but I never found myself being drawn back to check them out very often.

As I was thinking about this I started to go through my bookmarks and took another look at the sites that I go back to all the time. I started to look for the characteristics that kept drawing me back. As I was formulating what was surely going to be a best selling epic book, I picked up the now legendary book, The Cluetrain Manifesto. I got no further than the first paragraph of the introduction to see that my best-selling book had already been written (doh) and I had my answer for what drew me back to the web. The authors pose this question,

"What if the real attraction of the Internet is not its cutting-edge bells and whistles, its jazzy interface or any of the advanced technology that underlies it pipes and wires? What if, instead, the attraction is an atavistic throwback to the prehistoric human fascination with telling takes? Five thousand years ago, the marketplace was the hub of civilization, a place to which traders returned from remote lands with exotic spices, silks, monkeys, parrots, jewels-and fabulous stories."

It hit me and thousands of other people that the reason we came online is that there was a conversation of millions of voices happening, and we were missing out. In reading The Cluetrain Manifesto, it came clear what so many churches were missing as we moved online, a voice. [read more from next-wave magazine]
link from [Ian's Messy Desk]

The previous two posts (below) seem to be a kind of "Gonzo Marketing" approach to Church weblogging, and could also be applied to social groupings in ftf life. The idea of congregating people around their interests, and finding avenues through which to discover their diverse calling; their role in the mission of the Church. The Gonzo Marketing approach as I understand it, suggests the meeting and conversing with people where they are; to provide for their sharing of information, and introducing them to people who share a common interest.

The format of the blog or the Weblog encourages theologizing, for it lends itself to social commentary. If a blogger finds an item useful, they are often compelled to say why. Even if they offer no direct commentary, their choice of subject matter brings to the fore the issues which they wish to highlight.

Even in the act of highlighting things which merely exemplify their passion or interests, they are presenting their gift of connection to others in the community; to highlight things which attract an audience of two or three others, or dozens, or hundreds as the case may be, they are laying the groundwork for their interest group, and impetus to return, and gather a group around their information center. Their "weblog neighborhood", another common format found among bloggers, represents connections to other interests and concerns, and serves as a way to introduce their readers to their other concerns, to which their readers are more naturally drawn due to their common interest in the other items.

This creates micro-groupings within an organization, or church, who share information and ideas on a particular subject, and use that to open each other to additional components of their personhood.

"Theoblogical" reflection is to look at the ways that blogging helps us do theology. The most basic thng it brings to the discussion is to present a way of looking at the world, which is key to talking theology in many circles. With the net, we all have access to education, information, and opinions. This was, in the early days of the Church, a role of the pastor. To inform, comment, and theologize. Today, the pastor has more of a "host" and "provocateur" of conversation. While they may offer their opinion, and many look to them for such opinion, it is becoming less and less "informative" (since most of the news is already known) and more "perspective" and "prodding" for the congregation to engage in the process of theology in the context of community.

I posted to Brainstorms (Howard Rheingold's Online Community with a "Well" like feel) just a bit ago, and thought it would serve here well also:

Of course, with my interests in how all this affects the Theological Community, I have been drawn in and spend my evenings combing around the Weblog world with a wonder that I don't recall since firing up my first Mosaic session and browsing around the Web.

My church is one with a very large per-capita involvement in political or social issues, and so many members circulate emails and website sightings that deal with areas of their concerns. The Weblog provide an ideal "storage" and "enabling" of disseminating this kind of information, and with the ability to create Multi-author Weblogs (like in Radio's "Categories") and pull in rss feeds from other webloggers into one place, a Church Community weblog can be established.

We are convening a small Website committee to help me with my Web publishing tasks for the Church, and I am intending to introduce them to the idea.

I also see coming a Community Server idea that would not only host a "Church information site" but a series of member blogs (There is a little litany at our church where the speaker says "I am a COG", and the people say "A What?" and the speaker says "A COG; A Child of God"......and last Sunday when I heard it, my thinking lately immersed with weblogging, I thought "a COG Blog"; that would be a good service to provide, as a way to express, in the words of the members, something of the flavor of the community.

A Theoblog:

I've been thinking recently about Dr. David Lochhead, and how he would have probably loved Weblogs , given their high status in technically savy, literate circles. (He probably does, wherever he observes this from, if such a spy-hole into our world is either allowed or desired) He would have had one (again, maybe he does, on some other network, REALLY out of our domain), and used it extensively in Education. Dr. Locchead wrote prolifically in the area of the impact of digital culture on the idea of Biblical authority, and also wrote on such things as "The Bible tries to be hypertext".

I'd like to find other places and writers who fit into that mode of thinking.

It also gives me pause to ask the obvious question that presents itself , once those suppositions above are suggested: So how do we then take this weblog phenomenon and utilize its advantages in the world of Theological education?.....

Theoblog material: The Future of the Book, meaning, impact on the idea of Biblical interpretation, Biblical "usage", views on authority, etc.

e-Publishing and POD TidBits Pulled from Cites & Insights. Here are just a few of the useful tidibits I pulled from my reading of Cites & Insights courtesy of future of the book news. [Blunt Force Trauma]

"My Jihad". American mujahedin Aukai Collins was a passionate convert to Islam. But his new memoir makes it clear that nothing got him more excited than the sound of a rocket-propelled grenade and the look in an enemy's eyes as he slit his throat. [Salon.com]

Well, now isn't that special? It's pretty sickening too, as well as how many stories like this come out at a time like this. Not exactly conducive to understanding is it? About as much as an anti-Christian news outlet (or more likely, a person with an apocalypse-size chip on their shoulder about Christianity (or the "brands" of it they seem to get exposed to all too often) releasing story after story of abortion clinic bombers or Klu Klux Klansmen quoting the Bible.

The author of the above review is NOT blaming Islam for the views of this man, but the appearance of the book seems timed well enough to do the work of re-emphasizing the link between Islamic spirtuality and violence.

Well, duh, of course all these psychopathic followers of some crazed apocalyptic dream are going to be highlighted, but it bothers me, just as it bother Christians and Muslims alike, that any divine claim is being made to justify senseless violence.

"On that day I realized that I was among the strange few who knew war and loved it nonetheless." Many of the mujahedin Collins meets fall into this category, and Islam gives him and them a moral framework for consummating that love. "

The latter quote from the review is scary . It leaves me with the frustration I get when I put myself in the place of a Muslim whose deep devotionto their relgious tradition and its writing s leads them to entirely different, more reconciliatory conclusions. Peaceful conclusions. I know I feel that way when I read of Christians glorifying war.

I have never said that there is NEVER a cause to take up arms. There are certainly times. Post Sept. 11 was a call to action, not that I was without pause in approving all the measures the US took as they began bombing. All the "regrets" about civilain casualties caused me to ask how such measures which always seem to end up causing such regrets are NOT REALLY "regrets" that they have any intention of preventing in the future, but are seen as calculated costs, which bothers me.

Before I go home, I feel the need to be theoblogical..........I've been posting some "openers" to some of my Categories that I cleaned up and re-did last night , mainly so the "Comments" would start working again, which they did. The point is, is to actaully GET some comments. Somebody I would not have known had they not told me they posted, did post to one of my blogs yesterday, and I was thrilled. The theoblogical thing here is that this is all creating a new way of interacting, because there's a framewrork of sorts (Stream of Consciousness; journal type entries, Direct commentary on some particular news item, or "Stories", any of which point to other Weblogs, sometimes other non-weblog-but-still-Web items, and then there's News Aggregation that lets us all subscribe to updates to each other's blogs, which is really cool, and then there's "Comments", which isn't really all that active in most places I've seen use it....but I would want to keep it there.

It's the end of the day, and I should have left my desk and headed home by now, and I'll probably be back right at it when I get home about 45 minutes from now (long LONG commute, but I don't mind it so much anymore now that the roads have been improved in this Nashville area)

"The Cluetrain Manifesto" and related articles ("It's not a nurdy thing" ) in my "stories" section....

Open Source Theology :: collaborative theology for a cross-border church This one's almost got to be a winner...just from the first few lines:

"An open-source theology is community driven: it is dependent on the contributions of a wide range of participants and the interaction that takes place between them. We take this approach because we believe that it is an appropriate means of defining an authentic theology for the emerging culture."

"For example, we could establish a set of fundamental 'connections' between God and the world and make these the heart of the OST. They would provide a developmental framework for a range of functional theological arguments, tools, resources, that will equip us to deal with the various theoretical and practical issues that arise in the course of an emerging-culture mission."

Interesting. Sounds kind of like what the structure and tendencies of Weblogs lend us to. Not coincidentally, I think, Weblogs arose from the Open Source Community or amongst many who are closely aligned with it.

I have dived (have dove, diven, am diving ????) into Weblogging head first, but as soon as I did, I knew my heart was right there with me. This is exciting. After just finishing a book by Lawrence Lessig The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World which depressed the shit out of me about how the Internet is being "monkeyed with", but this time not as much by people of the ilk of the original Net revolution, where protocols were built and standards were developed collaboratively and Open Source type things happened. This time, it's the people who have the most to lose by Open Code and the power of the voice of the people. By closing access, at the edges of the Network, or making it more and more difficult for certain kinds of technologies to flourish, the dangers are growing that the Internet is becoming more like what the Media outlets in power would like it be: something they can control.

With Weblogging, I see a second wave of revolution. If the internet was the original Net Revolution, and the Powers striking back is the counter-revolution, then the Weblogs represent a Third Wave (to borrow a title from Toffler). I have been spouting off about Portals for the past two to three years, and now I see a major avenue and channel for the Portal to really be useful: as a way of connecting individuals to their communties that are out there waiting for them but have yet to discover them. Blogs; Weblogs are personal portals that collaborate across the Net to build something powerful. And nowhere am I more excited about this than how this might empower a new people intelligence within the Theological Community (and in some churches)...

Thus far, I have seen very little in Weblog land (I know they're out there, though) that uses the word Christian that doesn't also adhere to nearly everything right-wing. I linked to a couple of sites today that I found that didn't spout it quite so much. Places like Sojourners (I know the Webmaster there, perhaps I should write him and ask "You Blog?"

For any of you out there who feel a little isolated in amongst the multitudes of "Christian Blogs" who speak a different language and spout a theology which is more Chrisitianity American-style rather than , well, things usually other than that. I'm on a mission to find you. I hope that as I bring some of my initial intros of Christian theology that I used when I ventured out on the Web in 1994 (and got flamed constantly by people out to save me), that I can connect with the fellow Webloggers who look for the same, or have already found some and are spreading the word.)

Weblogs are online journals and link-sharing tools. New feeds are also shared which update on the "syndicator" site as it is updated on the "sydicat-ee" site.

Technically, these sites use a set of tools that are XML based, allowing them to help the Weblogger organize and share their information, as well as provide a structure for more efficient searching and categorizing.

In my church, there are several people very active in many different organizationas or advocacy actions, and most of them are sending emails around which point to this or that resource on the Web. Weblogs are the ideal way to keep people in touch with the News that interests them most.

My own site where my web pages reside now has a blogs subdirectory where I have started off on this quest to glean communicative treaures and features to help us capture some benefit from this new set of features. The bnice thing is, Weblogs and Blogs have been created within the Open Source Software movement, and so things are shared everywhere, and people are writing Plugin tools for many of these Weblog tools.

Any of you out there seen this happening, and/or started your own? What are your observations?

I am going to start supplying links to helpful Introductory Weblog articles that explain what all the fuss is about. Eventually, as I learn the ropes of crerating a News Feed and getting it going, I will start an Ecunet section of my blogging subsite.

I use a tool called RadioUserland that is a nifty offline editor that provides some easy interfaces to help me prepare and publish Weblogs, News links, and Categories (see my opening attempts and comments at http://mywebpages.comcast.net/dlature/blogs