Zach mentioned this a month ago, when it was timely, but since it is a Sunday morning I’ll bring it up again: There is a virtual God.
Or at least there was a major service held this past Easter in a virtual world. LiveChurch.TV conducted special services in Second Life this year at their new in-world facility. The organization—which claims almost 20,000 parishioners gathering in metro churches to watch simulcast sermons—drew a diverse collection of avatars, both in terms of appearance and religious perspective, to their April 8th Easter Service. LCTV, under the direction of Terry Storch, launched a new version of their web site this spring and will be working to open an Internet campus in the next quarter.
Since avatars there have everlasting life and can imagine themselves as anything they want, perhaps we’ve discovered sim-Heaven. Eric Stillman, author of The New Life Blog, wrote:
LifeChurch.tv is obviously on the extreme cutting edge of church, attempting to reach out to those who are more likely to check out a virtual church than a real one. But it certainly seems almost comical, doesn’t it? After all, they’re ministering to fake people!!! If an avatar responds to an altar call and gives her life to Jesus, what does that mean??? I’m pretty sure I can’t remember anything in my theology books that prepared me for that, and I’m having trouble locating “avatar†in my concordance. But LifeChurch.tv knows that behind these fake people are real people who may never be reached any other way, and as I shake my head in wonder I have to give them credit for boldly going where no church has ever gone before.
Eric goes on to predict the creation of an SL Bible, with edits to verses such as John 6:19-20—The disciples saw Jesus approaching the boat, walking on the water, and Peter said “Big deal. I can teleport.”
MSNBC covered the event after the fact and hinted at yet another recurrence of brick-n-mortar anxiety. The article says Elaine Heath, an ordained minister and professor at Southern Methodist University, insists people have to be in a community living out faith together to really have a church. While I don’t believe online life is a replacement for the real one, neither is community solely a product of face-to-face interaction. If authentic connections are being made through mediated communications, that counts.
God and technology are mixing more and more. Tony Morgan, a pastor and tech guy for NewSpring Church, wrote a list of mistakes churches make when confronting IT. Two of them—Letting technology drive the ministry rather than letting ministry drive the technology, and Not making technology a priority to reach today’s culture—could be viewed as the impetus for the SL church project. In His traditional delivery, God is not accessible to a large segment of the population. The same advantages computer-mediated communication bring to other communities, such as anonymity and managed interaction, can lower barriers to entry for religious community, too. Some are recognizing this by leveraging Web 2.0 technologies. More importantly, they are using the tools to share strategies.
On that note, here’s your weekly meditation, courtesy YouTube:
(Thanks, again, to Zack for this.)
4 replies on “God is gr8”
Of course, I am completely sucked in, (by Baby got Book) and am canceling my appointment this morning so I can go to . . . wait- no need to go anywhere, right?
But for this: “If authentic connections are being made through mediated communications, that counts.” You threw this large comment in like Jesus=Superman comparison at summer Bible camp, and I haven’t accepted either into my heart.
When I was graduating from school, they were just starting to debate the ethics of long-distance therapy- what state guidelines apply, can you bill insurance, is it as valuable as face-to-face, and since then, the debate has spread to internet therapy services.
When providing therapy, striving for an authentic connection, I tune in to subtleties of body language, changes in voice tone, an anxious glance to the left. These parts of my brain, silent from the chorus of conscious thought, allow me to foster a more concrete connection with my client. Online, or on phone, I can not be as competent, or as connected.
Thanks. I’ll qualify the following comment by recognizing that there are situations where certain modes of communication are going to be preferred. You know better than I the needs of a therapeutic relationship the trade-offs that come with choices in how you interact. The design of any remote therapy application would have to take those insights into account.
Studies on this subject tend to assume that relationships are either online or offline, but not a combination of the two. My argument here and elsewhere is that the are zero-sum only from moment to moment, not relationship to relationship. We use both. We benefit from both.
In general, use of both mediation and direct interaction is only going to strengthen relationships by (a) providing many more opportunities to interact, and (b) by providing opportunities to interact where specific barriers to entry are lessened. In the same way relying only on IM or email to communication misses the physical cues you mention, so too does relying only on face-to-face—or most annoyingly to me, declaring face-to-face to be inherently superior—exclude people who are inhibited, require more time to compose thoughts, and have schedules that do not fit with that of those with power in the relationship.
My main concern is when IM, phone or email, or whatever else the newest method is, edges out face-to-face.
Loaded question, but would you rather talk with me face-to-face? We do many of our daily family nitty gritty discussing via IM, from the dinner call to the transportation logistics, and it’s handy, and, ime, much easier than constant phone calls or a large calendar chart on the door. But when I type, “Carter’s playdate was canceled” you can’t see my face- my sadness over his rejection, or my relief over avoiding an awkward situation. Too much of missing those subtle communications can drain a relationship.
That is a little like saying, wouldn’t it be great if the people I wanted to talk to were available to come over to my house for a chat. It depends. Yes, that would be ideal, but the house isn’t always ready for company. I may be sick or not having a great day for self-confidence. I may need to multi-task to meet other needs. I may want to be able to stop the conversation on my terms because of a limited opportunity. I may not have the funds to go out and get the people I want to put face to face, either by me going there or them coming here. Context and constraints are important.
But that shouldn’t mean no contact is possible or valuable unless all of those things align.
One valuable thing happening right here, potentially, is that I can take advantage of my moment to type, after taking several such moments to contemplate, and share not just with you but with others. That is certainly possible with face to face contact, but only if you are really very patient with the pace of the conversation and you locate the people in the world who might be interested in this comment and accurately convey my meaning.
The relationship within 1:1 therapy or even group therapy adds additional constraints of safety, trust and privacy, something that a face-to-face interaction can do better in most situations than computer-mediated communication. In other kinds of relationships, a multi-modal approach offers more ways to connect, each with a specific set of constraints and benefits, allowing us to communicate better.