Rev. Rachel Writes: Leaving Church

Rev. Rachel Writes: Leaving Church

The Emergent Church and Technology

Earlier I wondered aloud, well in print, or in the blog about how the changes in technology might mean a new configuration of how we worship and embody the Church in this era. I am finding other bloggers with the similar questions but different bibliographies, such as Jason Clark. There I learned of Cynthia Ware and the Digital Sanctuary. I did not know there was such a thing as Internet evangelism until I got to that site.

Emerging Church and Life Indigenous to the Net

I continue to explore the relationship between the changing face of life in North America and the future of the Church in the U.S. now what do we mean by emerging church. An article from Scot McKnight will be very helpful. Brian McClaren has created a site the wiredparish.com gives a glimpse of the ways emerging churches continue to try to use technology for the good of the church.

Net Indigenous Seminary and Church?

I found a helpful entry to AKMA's Thoughts that raised the possibility of a seminary with a net indigenous culture. His entry sent me to a short video “Blogumentary,” This is a one hour video that introduces the reader to blogs and blogging. A seminary with a net indigenous culture must address the relationship to a church that may or may not be in a net indigenous culture.

Notes on John Battelle's book The Search

John Battelle's book The Search introduces the readers to a number of interesting persons Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt of Google and Jerry Yang and David Filo of Yahoo! To mention just a few. But one of my favorites was Bill Gross.

During his time as head of a children's software learning company Gross worked with Stephen Spielberg. “Inspired by Spielberg, Gross decided his dream job was to start a company that allowed him to start many companies in parallel – a business incubator of sorts an idea factory.” This observation was quite helpful for me ad my own sense of vocation. For what is a college or seminary if not an idea factory.” (p 99)

The assumptions in the Society of Biblical Literature post on the wikipedia did not attend to one of the core assumptions of the Internet, namely that in the beginning for folk on the Web research begins on the Web. “When folks went looking for something, they usually started at a search engine.” (p 155) Now what happens in biblical studies if the Web precedes the library as the first research step. What happens when persons choose institutions of higher education through a process that begins with a search engine?

Google's VP Tim Armstrong describing the notion of AdWords says “search turns a cost center into a profit center.” (p 171) The challenge for small schools is to figure out how vehicles such as Google AdWords can prove to be a leveraged resource for marketing.

Google employee number one, Craig Silverstein “I would like to see a search engines become like the computers in Star Trek, yous talk to them and they understand what you're asking.” (p15) We aspire information search that we ask for in our own vernacular. If computers start to understand our queries will it matter that persons do not understand one another's queries?

Budget Workshop

This week I went back to Richmond for a budget workshop at Bethany. While there I stopped into the office and saw Pam. Then there was a productive afternoon with the adminstrative team and Dan the acting academic dean.

Further Reflections on the Long Tail

For education how do you reduce the cost of niches?

Anderson talks about three powerful forces.

• Democratizing the tools of production
• Cutting the cost of consumption by democratizing distribution
• Connecting supply and demand

For education the tools of production have in fact been democratized. Desktop publishing and publishing to the web make the narrow juried approach an affectation of the scholarly guild. One wonders if a savvy person might one day use technology to subvert entities such as the Society of Biblical Literature and the Catholic Biblical Association. A website and or a podcast requires a winsome charm not a degree from a university nor standing in a professional society. So in that regard democratizing the tools of production cuts both ways.

Few things befuddle universities and seminaries more than the challenge of cutting cost by democratizing distribution. Often the attempt to do this in the recent past has been the deep discounting of tuition. Unfortunately even deep discounts have not stemmed the tide of other changes effecting enrollment such as increasing regionalism of both undergraduate and graduate students. So this remains probably the biggest conundrum for any school that wants to benefit from the long tail.

This leads naturally into the challenge of connecting supply of information and education with demand.