You, me and #CNMAC13
Below you can see a picture of my church between the hours of 6am and 9am on Sunday morning. Of course it is not a church as such. It is the main studio of BBC Radio Surrey, where I co-hosted the Sunday Breakfast show with Emily Jeffery this week. A few moments before going on air, we took the decision to try running a virtual harvest festival.Over the next two hours or so, people ‘sent’ in their donations – ranging from tinned beans and steak, through to vegetables grown in their gardens, a cake…and even a breakfast for the two of us, cooked outdoors on an allotment and then sent in by photo. Before I left the studio, I ‘blessed’ the produce on air and the homes from which it had come.
Of course radio is not ‘new’ media, it is pretty old media – but our little virtual harvest festival was a reminder about the possibilities of a church without walls. Those possibilities are magnified several fold by new media. Just yesterday I agreed to speak at one of the breakout sessions at this year’s Christian New Media Conference. I wrote the description myself, so I have no-one else to blame:
New Media, New Community – Richard Littledale
Church is, as we all know, the people and not the building. How does new media facilitate church as community unrestricted by walls or geography? Dare we talk about a church unrestricted by credal limitations too, standing in an open digital space with the wider community?
I have written on here about my discomfort with the speaker as a magician who reveals her or his polished work at the last moment with a flourish. I believe wholeheartedly in harnessing the power of social media to do things together where possible. This applies whether it is a service about awe, a sermon on Mary, or a discipleship session on prayer. When I was asked to introduce myself to a bunch of creatives, I asked others to do it for me, with surprising results. (See image below) Faced now with the task of discussing new media, new community, it strikes me that it would be crazy to do so without your help. So…
- In what sense is Christian community enhanced by new media?
- In what sense is it inhibited by new media?
- What is the ONE WORD which best describes online community for you?