Don't settle for cheap alternatives

Much has been said and debated recently about the newest craze to hit cyberspace, Twitter. For the uninitiated, Twitter is a free “micro-blogging” service that enables users to update anyone in their online social networks. Update about what? Update about anything. The whole premise of Twitter is that people want to give and receive comprehensive information about life’s minutiae. “Let me tell you what I ate for lunch”; “I had a very strange dream last night”; “Did you catch last night’s episode of Lost?” And on and on. This chatter is called “tweeting” – blogging in quips and snatches so that we can stay “hyper-connected” (Twitter’s term).

Having never “tweeted” I can only imagine how much fun it is to have an on-going, give-and-take newsfeed with all my friends throughout the day. Apparently it is a lot of fun if the reports on its popularity are to be believed. But, at its core the popularity of Twitter must rest on a more fundamental level. Like so many other social networking technologies, Twitter seems to help us scratch an itch we all feel deep down: we need to be connected to others in a thriving community.

It is no surprise, then, to hear that tweeting is finding a home in some churches. Time Magazine reports that a small number of churches have embraced the practice by which people can instantly respond to what is going on in a service by tweeting. Their messages are sent to others in the congregation or are projected onto a screen.1 From trivial to deep, the thoughts of individuals across a congregation are broadcast for further reflection and even dialogue. It must make for an exciting Sunday morning and a sense that the congregation is awake, active, and involved in each others’ experience. More than that, some church leaders see it as a great opportunity to advance healthy community life. “It’s a huge responsibility of a church to leverage whatever's going on in the broader culture, to connect people to God and to each other”. These are the words of Todd Hahn, pastor of Next Level Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, and an apologist for Twitter use in services. This however provokes a question regarding the Church, contemporary culture, and our understanding of community. Who is setting the terms of what constitutes a healthy community? Is it the “wider culture” or the Body of Christ?

The example from Next Level church is but a small one and really doesn’t help us answer that larger question. Neither is it the case that Twitter is a cause for concern. It is a tool and like others can be used well or foolishly. The problem is that Twitter, as a tool, isn’t a fulcrum robust enough to “leverage” much of anything that can seriously be called prayer—which is the food of communion with God—or conversation—which is the life blood of friendship.

The apostle Paul in the book of Ephesians makes an extended case for the unity of the Church and by doing so shows us what true community looks like. Paul uses his favourite image of what the Church is: it is a body with each member being organically connected to the other. Despite our differences we are united through the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, our saviour and the one true King. We have access to God the Father through the Spirit (Eph. 2:18). The eternal, loving, insoluble community of the Trinity is the foundation of our community in the Church. Paul, however still must encourage the Church to work out that unity in practical ways. We are to bear with one another (4:2), maintain an eagerness for unity (4:3), speak truth to one another in love(4:14,25), put our hands to good use in order to share with those among us in need (4:28), use our mouths to speak in ways that are fitting and encouraging (4:29), and show kindness, tenderheartedness and forgiveness. These are the activities of a healthy community, one in which its members are working in concert for each other and in service with each other.

This rich vision of community life in so many respects shows up much of what passes for community in general within our plugged-in and on-the-go lifestyles. With little time to actually establish and maintain meaningful relationships, we content ourselves by merely making digital “connections” with others, however tenuous. Twitter, and Facebook, and MySpace allow us the illusion, at least, that we are in community with others even as we run breathlessly to the next thing. By relying too heavily on these technologies we should not be surprised if the very concept of community is eroded within our understanding. This erosion occurs at least along two lines: 1) a supplanting of the healthy give and take of conversation with “updating”, a practice that, given our self-centeredness, easily becomes narcissistic and 2) a loss of an ability and opportunity to really commune with another person in person.

The danger of online social networking is the level of control that users have of what others see and do not see. If someone does not play the game as we want him to we can simply block him. If another finds my jokes funny why wouldn’t I keep sending them along? Before long a comfortable network of individuals gets established and what counts as meaningful communication between one another is simply an exchange of mutually-reinforcing false images of each other—truly a perverse intimacy. It is easy to hide behind a text message. It is far more difficult to look into someone’s eyes and speak the truth.
Yet, it is precisely this kind of embodied truth-telling that we need even if it is difficult. We cannot understand and love one another deeply, exhort one another accurately, serve one another sacrificially, and forgive one another meaningfully unless we share life with each other, substantially, in the flesh. This is a simple truth, perhaps even a trivial one, but even the Church needs to have it rehearsed in an age in which digitally-nurtured loneliness is becoming commonplace.

By “outsourcing” the hard work of human interaction to computer mediation we run the risk of jeopardizing the very thing we long for: we risk the loss of actually being in a real community within which we can give and receive love. Don’t settle for cheap alternatives.

Dom Vincent worked at Christian Heritage until May 08 and has now returned to the States, working at Biola University.

1 See www.time.com/time/business/article/0, 8599, 1895463,00.html

Dom Vincent, 21/07/2009