My Account

Engaging the World

For those who lead in mission, service and peace ministries.

Hi-tech missions

by Ryan Miller

With cell phones, text messaging, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and more, we now have more ways to speak and be heard than at any other time in history. That sounds promising, right? At first glance, the ability to connect with others anywhere and at any time via any number of platforms seems ideal for spreading the gospel. But these new ways of communicating can change our interactions in ways we may not anticipate.

Technology can serve a community but it cannot create community.

For example, although workers on the mission field have applauded the way technology allows them to remain in touch with their loved ones back home, they have reported that it makes it more difficult to fully invest in the communities they have joined.

Each piece of technology adds a filter—a screen—between individuals, and this filter changes the nature of each relationship. Texting across the ocean is not equal to praying across a table. Technology makes it possible to live in isolation, outside of community, and still communicate with the world.

Through these screens we may teach about Christ, but we cannot practice community. Through electronic communication we may connect over distances, but we cannot practice intimacy.

One pastor in the Midwest began emailing the content of the Sunday morning sharing time to all the members the congregation. Though the emails did pass on news, the pastor said that they eliminated opportunities for personal connection. Before if someone missed worship, they would contact a friend for updates. Now because people could receive news electronically, there was no need seek it out personally. The congregation unintentionally lost a significant point of connection outside of Sunday morning worship.

Writer and philosophy professor Albert Borgmann talks of focal practices—acts that put us in touch with what is real and present in the world. The ultimate focal practice, Borgmann believes, is communion. In the act of communion, we share with one another and with God. Imagine sharing communion online or over the phone. Virtual communion, like virtual communication, would not be able to deliver the same level of intimacy.

Does this mean that the church should reject online banter, blogging, and even the telephone? Not necessarily. The Great Commission challenges us to share the message of Christ’s salvation with the world—to transform and to be transformed. While a virtual relationship alone is not sufficient to share Christ’s grace, it may augment a community of faith. Technology can serve a community, even though it cannot create community.

In a recent presentation at an Anabaptist Communicators gathering in Wichita, Kansas, representatives of the Greteman Group offered five tips for virtual communication. In light of the limitations of electronic communication, I expand on them here:

Listen. Who in your community or congregation has ideas, insights, or needs? How can you recognize the voices that cannot or will not speak electronically?
Talk. Speak in love. Express grace. Share the words of Christ. Guard against using the anonymity of electronic communication to speak words that you wouldn’t be able to say face-to-face.
Energize. Physical presence and a willingness to engage can add more energy than an e-mail—even one sent to hundreds of your best friends. Respond to the blogosphere with personal interactions instead of posted replies.
Help. When needs are apparent, go to where the needs are. Be a presence in your neighborhood, willing to ask and answer questions and work with others to improve lives and share love. Focus on proximity—finding God at work where you are.
Embrace. Physically, corporeally embrace individuals, causes, and concepts. Be where you are needed in body and spirit, not just on screen.

Through technology we can communicate with the world while living in isolation.

Ryan Miller is editorial director at Mennonite Mission Network’s Elkhart office. He attends Southside Mennonite Fellowship in Elkhart, Indiana.