How Digitization Might Negatively Affect Church Community
I found this article by Dan Edelen today, and though it is long, I think it is an excellent discussion of how digital communication might negatively affect community. I don’t fully agree with the article, as I think we need to engage the digital world, because that’s where people are, but I really like this discussion. We need to be thinking about the negatives right along with the positives regarding the … well digitization of communication. I just copied and pasted the story below - I’d love to hear what you think!
Source: http://ceruleansanctum.com/2010/02/tech-the-church-and-the-death-of-community.html
Tech, the Church, and the Death of Community
February 9, 2010
Posted by Dan Edelen
Everybody’s talking at me.
I don’t hear a word they’re saying,
Only the echoes of my mind.
— Harry Nilsson
I now sit behind a Plexiglas wall.
It’s about five feet high and surrounds most of my drum kit. To drown out the deafening wall of sound reflected off the barrier from my drumming, I wear in-ear monitors that seal off everything but the mix (which I’m not in).
When the rest of the worship team talks to each other, I don’t hear them. Or I get a strange, far away echo picked up from the stage mics. Disembodied voices that seem to come from nowhere, yet everywhere, the words mingling into murk.
There’s a vibe you get as a musician playing in a band. When everyone’s doing their thing right, you gain a sixth sense of where the music is going. You can riff off what others do. You feel a part of something bigger than yourself and your contribution to the music. It’s almost a rapturous thing.
Unless you sit cut off in your own little room.
As of the start of the year, I now sit behind a Plexiglas wall. And jammed in my head are tiny, sophisticated speakers supposedly keeping me connected to the outer world.
It’s a perfect metaphor.
I’ve been on Facebook about a year. I think it has replaced my normal community, not because I wanted it to, but because it’s what others I know have rushed to embrace.
I think everyone is rushing. Not a single small group I’m a part of meets regularly anymore. No one can find a place on the schedule. Which is why Facebook is appealing. You and I can maintain the semblance of a relationship to other humans by texting from a Blackberry all the fun things we’re doing by ourselves.
I long ago gave up scheduling parties. Trying get three couples together face-to-face to do anything is akin to mounting an expedition to Everest.
So we text. And the Facebook walls fill up with graffiti.
I read fewer blogs anymore. It’s a lot of text from people who increasingly seem like the imaginary friends of my childhood. I find it a bit disturbing. That line in Ecclelsiastes that reads that the making of books has no end was long before the profusion of text bombarding us from every direction, most of it utterly throwaway.
We have all these high tech devices to help us communicate, but as I see it, there’s never been less genuine, lasting communication than there is today.
Below is just a sampling of news stories I’ve seen recently (and yes, I understand the circular nature of that statement):
‘Internet Addiction’ Linked to Depression, Says Study
Could it be that something about our society today causes depression, and those most affected by it are the ones seeking a respite in the “approved” source of modern comfort, the Internet?
Computers Can’t Replace Us
Tech pundit Jaron Lanier laments the dumbing down of interaction and the lost sense of identity that the Internet fosters.
The Teens Who Can Barely Talk
What happens when a person’s vocabulary reflects only words found in the most commonly texted phrases?
In Praise of Online Obscurity
When Wired magazine wonders if all this social media is only robbing our relational bank accounts and diluting effective communication, well…
The Facebook Myth
Plenty of cause-joining, quiz-taking, and online activity, but does it amount to so much self-pleasuring and sloth?
I look at what is happening to communication and connection and wonder why we need this tech middleman to work as a go-between that links you and me to real life. I wonder if the depressed person is the one caught in the move away from the kind of face-to-face community cachet that used to fill our relational bank accounts. I read the above articles and I’m chilled by them.
And now I want to make one of the most bold statements I think I’ve ever made on Cerulean Sanctum:
In all my years of watching the Church, I’ve never seen an individual church improved by technology, only diminished by it.
I want to add that there is a difference between lifeblood and convenience. Tech can make things more convenient. Having a computer and color laserpinter to design and print the church bulletins is great for convenience. But no computer or laserprinter can build the core functions of the Church. And when we confuse convenience with lifeblood, look out.
Yet how is it that churches are spending collective billions to become more tech savvy? How is it that upgrading the sound system in the church can become more important than helping a member fix her car or pay a bill he cannot pay due to job loss?
And how is it that we think we can insert tech into the basics of the faith and make them better? We had hymnals, then overhead projectors, then Powerpoint slide shows, and now we have the words of the music we sing to God backed by a full-blown media presentation complete with a 24-fps YouTube video of other people worshiping and capped by a Blue Angels flyover.
How can we not understand what we’re losing?
We can plaster our church lobbies with costly flat-panel displays showing stock photo slideshows of smiling, fair-haired people with nice teeth telling visitors to our church just how much we love them, 
yet those very same visitors can walk out without a handshake and a genuine human being who says, “Hey! Come join my wife and me for lunch after the service.”
We can pour line after line of text into Facebook and still not understand that our “friends” are desperate to truly connect with other people, yet no longer know how.
We can grow jealous of the person who has the tech device we don’t, which allows him or her to communicate in a way we can’t afford.
We can continue to buy into the marketing that we must surround ourselves with yet one more tech gizmo we didn’t know we truly needed—and then miss the reality that none of us seem to get together anymore.
And we can fill our churches with millions of bucks worth of tech, only to find each of us behind a Plexiglas wall, our in-the-ear monitors failing to pick up the full conversation, as we wonder what happened to that freeing vibe we used to feel in the music of real community.
I can’t help but think that technology is turning our human conversations into white noise, even as it isolates us and leads us to a place of asking if anyone really, truly cares.
This article is certainly a dynamic blend of passionate rhetoric and frustration concerning digitalization within the church body. There are a couple of powerful statements that I find humorous but perhaps misleading. “And how is it that we think we can insert tech into the basics of the faith and make them better? We had hymnals, then overhead projectors, then Powerpoint slide shows, and now we have the words of the music we sing to God backed by a full-blown media presentation…” It is apparent that he paints the canvas with a very broad brush. For he also states, “In all my years of watching the Church, I’ve never seen an individual church improved by technology, only diminished by it.” This may be his experience, but it is arguable that his experience does not reflect all Christian experiences (including my own).
Digitalization and technology is not the issue. It is the individuals behind it. Digitalization is a tool that when wielded in the proper Christian hands can be very effective for the kingdom of God. As always, “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” Digitalization/technology isn’t the cause of disconnect in interrelatedness among Christians. It is not the cause for being unable to reach the lost. It is the “heart-issue.” It is an attempt in our American ethos of consumerism and affluence to substitute GOD. Nothing can replace Christ and him crucified. Nothing can replace the inner-workings of the Holy Spirit.
Digitalization has a place in the church but it is not to be a substitute for reality (e.g. Couch potatoes attending church services via their television as if it replaces the ekklesia community).
I would argue not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Edelen touches briefly on people being the negative driving force behind digitalization (e.g. “lifeblood vs. convenience”), but I do not feel he articulates that enough; almost painting technology as intrinsically evil. However, I would add, Mr. Edelen does draw vital attention to a crisis in the present church era.
Well expressed, but definitely one-sided. Here’s why: what about kids who have great relationships with people and Facebook (or texting) simply replaces mail-writing or other forms of non-face-to-face communication? I know plenty of people who have deep and meaningful relationships with others that they also interact with on Facebook. I would also point out that many Facebook users are there because everyone else is there, and it’s convenient (like having a cell phone). It’s just the simple process of technological dispersion.
I think there are spiritual elements to community, but I don’t know if the profusion of texting or Facebooking is the end community. In some cases, it is a tool to strengthen. I think this goes back to McLuhan’s argument… ‘the medium is the message.’ Every medium provides new possibilities, but of itself, is inanimate.
Thanks for the great responses - I have so many thoughts on this that I’ve been putting off responding for lack of time. Even now I must shorten my thoughts. First - for Jeremy, I agree completely. Technology can damage relationships, but it also can improve them. I think Shane Hipps talks in… “Flickering Pixels” I think? about how with every technology something is gained and something is lost. This is exactly the case with digital media - now some of what could be lost might be too valuable to let go of, but that doesn’t mean there is nothing gained. And… well the book called the Bible is really a technological device much like the computer. Should we all throw out our Bibles because of the modernizing nature of text? Of course not! But should we try to be aware that text makes us predisposed to certain ways of thinking? Absolutely. k- I could keep going, but Work!!!
Peter - also agree. Kids these days, though they are losing something (I think there is a loss in an understanding of interpersonal intimacy) technology has really given them a different language to communicate with. Facebook is like a language. Now I really do advocate teaching young people about face-to-face relationships, but on the other hand I cannot deny their newly formed culture. OI! Wish we could all go down to The Old Toad and talk about this over a wierd European draft of some sort
It’s special that i’ve heard this article on google , keep up the good work mate …I’ve just subscribed to your feeds. Cheers!
Thanks Ernie - Blessings!
Great information. Thanks for the publish.
That is some inspirational stuff. Never knew that opinions could be this varied. Thanks for all the enthusiasm to offer such helpful information here.
A good article. I appreciate the sentiment (technology degrades rather than improves relationships), but am inclined to disagree for reasons other than those suggested by other commenters.
I used to believe technology was “neutral” — the whole people kill people thing. I no longer do.
Technology was given to us by God to be created and used for His purposes. It can be, itself, a positive force for god.
HOWEVER, that requires that as soon as people are involved, the process must be submitted to the leading of the Holy Spirit. I.e., when we design it. If we don’t do that, the new tech-tool becomes part of the “if you aren’t for Me, you are against Me” group.
We’ve been working on a whole new Biblical worldview of technology based on this alternate premise.
The model is based in scripture: God poured out His Spirit into Bezalel, a technologist of his day, to create a wonderful tabernacle (Exodus). Jesus the “carpenter” was a ‘tekton’ - Mark 6:3, a skilled craftsman who made beautiful things out of the available materials). God Himself (Heb 11:10) is a ‘technites’ — master craftsman. These seem like pretty good exemplars
How can technology literally be “good”? We have a growing set of examples. Our first was a popular voice response system. Instead of giving you the runaround, the system knows it can be a problem. It silently awards you “pain points” if it doesn’t understand what you say. Earn enough pain points, or use certain trigger words or tone of voice, and you get an apologetic computer directing you to a person to give you help. No person available? The system won’t even pick up the call in the first place.
It was explicitly and prayerfully designed to reflect Godly care and concern for the caller!
I think that’s pretty cool.
(Oops… so my bottom line is: while technology often degrades relationships today, it doesn’t have to be that way. We need to encourage the Church to take things to a higher level.)
An excellent article and certainly very thought provoking, but I cannot agree that all forms of electronic communication are negative.
I moved two years ago from a church where we were so fully part and so loved and cared for and prayed for that we felt bereaved when we moved. Bereft and alone. I cried often about leaving (and still do sometimes).
And yet, week after week, even two years on, friends from that place make arrangements to drive through to see us/have dinner/coffee/pray for us and comment on things that are happening to us. All because of my facebook news and their news to me.
Two months ago my husband had the chance to showcase some new songs at a special event. Person after person encouraged him, sent comments and private messages in a way that encouraged him and built him up. Would he have been able to let as many friends know by phoning them one by one to tell them about it? NO - it would take too long. Nor can he make a public announcement at a church meeting - but FB allowed him and me to share things of our lives with two church communities in two different places.
The only problem I can see is if the electronic community replaces personal community in its entirety. But for me, this is not an issue and never will be. I love people, I love being with them, we cook for and invite people into our homes as often as we possibly can. But I have seen the warning signs in others’ lives but rather than cut existing friends off I encourage them to talk with real people as often as possible and to “get out more”. We all have areas in our lives where we need the gentle love and correction from others.
Nevertheless - and I write as a pastor here - fb/twitter etc have as much potential for causing hurt and offence as real life and to ignore that potential is folly. Communicating your intentions in advance if you are leaving fb/twitter/passwording your blog/leaving the virtual community would be my advice. Whereas you or I might have our security in other things or God himself, many people struggle with “orphan” issues.
Last week I attended a national conference. A woman I hadn’t seen for 10 years came up to me in an arena of thousands. Her first words to me?: “you didn’t become my facebook friend! I wondered what I had done wrong!” My reply? “You didn’t do anything. I have decided to keep my fb friends to a smaller number in my geographic area”…(help? what else do you say!?!?!) and I assured her how good it was to see her right then and there in person, and to hear her news.
And I reminded her that her facebook friend request was under the cross of Jesus. We are brought into community with Father, Son and Holy Spirit and that supercedes all pending friend requests here on earth