Saturday 22 December 2007

Church for the Facebook Generation

At the recent meeting of Area Deans and Lay Chairs, Bishop John possed a serious of questions. One of the last was about the internet. He mentioned the existing diocesan site and asked how we engage with the Facebook Generation....
Facebook is an interesting phenomena. A product of web 2.0 as the internet becomes more interactive and less static; Facebook is only one of many social networking sites, but it's become enormously popular - largley, I suspect, because of the huge number of silly widgets and aps that you can play with.
There's a group of people at All Saints' who've been using it over the last few months. It's become an interesting extension of the church community as people have poked, bombed, raided and quized each other.
One of the most interesting element of this has been the status reports - "Tim is awake". On occassion these have started conversations and created a sense of continuing community. Facebook has created the possibility of a 24/7 church community which would otherwise be impossible in twenty first century MK...
Which is not to say it's totally wonderful. I have to say I'm logging on less frequently and the gadgets are less appealing as time goes by... The Money Programme did a super special on Facebook last night which raised the thorny issue of advertising and misuse of personal information. Perhaps Facebook will fade away and be replaced by something else...
The interesting thing is to observe how the internet is generating new methods of creating community. Perhaps it would be good for us to be a bit more proactive and theologically reflective - positively using and developing social networking...
Perhaps this should be on our agenda for 2008: Facebook, ichurch, Google Groups, etc...

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