Ministry in the not too distant future
Recently I discovered that visitors to my blog came from 103 countries, including such countries as Panama, Saudi Arabia, Rwanda, Faroe Islands, Iran, Russia and China. (Yes I had no idea either, the Faroe Islands are located northwest of Scotland and halfway between Iceland and Norway.)
Seeing this visitor diversity reminded me of the huge shift presently happening in society: moving from relating geographically to relating through networks or interests. This is being driven by the massive growth of the internet. In the not too distant future where you live will mean very little to whom you relate to and the context of your work.
Your workplace may well be wherever you want it to be, your ministry field perhaps on the other side of the world. The most obvious positive is that we potentially can reach huge numbers of people for a fraction of the cost (no travel expenses, venue set up costs etc..) And the negative is that we won’t have as much face to face contact. And for most of us this is the biggest struggle : the idea that we relate without meeting face to face. To quote Hugh Mackay, no longer do we need to be physically present to be in community.
The massive challenge facing us in the church and church organisations is that we are all deeply invested in the geographic model. Parishes are located in suburbs, with autonomous Christian organisations, one to each country. So as this shift away from geography builds momentum we are in for quite a shock.
It is essential that leaders start to wrestle with this otherwise we may well be left wondering where all the people went.. wait isn’t that happening already?
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(In my next post I will share practically how this new virtual ministry interaction might happen.)
Filed under Future, Leadership, Social Media/Web 2.0 | |
3 Responses to “Ministry in the not too distant future”
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The tools are are available for Pastors to connect with the world are getting more refined everyday. Facebook has lead the way in connecting people from around the world. Now there is www.Livekite.com. Livekite gives church leaders user friendly tools to create fully customized groups to centralize all communication. We are not far from having one online profile that let’s you connect with your friends on Facebook, your groups on Livekite and your business contacts on LinkedIn.
Thanks Philip, and thanks for the heads up on Live Kite. One of the central goals of my blog is to encourage pastors and church leaders to make use of the latest technological offerings - so thanks for your work!
[…] Mark Brown had an interesting post over at Facebook and on his blog, Ministry in the not too distant future. […]