I tire of churches that exhibit no sense of awareness that ours is a body of radical resistance to the culture;  a culture that praises individualism in contrast to the notion that Jesus calls us into being as his body ,  which sends the message that we are NOT individuals in a church, but a church called to BE A BODY;  an interdependent network of gifted individuals whose lives are to be intertwined as we seek to discern what God is calling us as UNITS to do.  The fellowship we are to seek and live is SO MUCH more than milling around in fellowship halls discussing our latest or upcoming vacations or the latest or upcoming Titans game or college football game (although I very much enjoy vacations and football).   But church is not a religious water-cooler (you know,  the “water-cooler” as the “location” of “the latest craze being discussed at work). 

I have often over the past 4 years,  since Howard Rheingold’s “Smart Mobs” came out,  stressed how the growth and maturation of mobile communication technologies have expanded the frequency with which we can “keep connected” in increasing places and situations. The PDA with Internet connection via wireless makes it possible to access email,  web information,  and instant messaging wherever we are that has “connectivity”,  now known as “hot spots”.

We are seeing a dramatic rise of “mobile services” such as ESPN features on cell phones that allow the sports enthusiast to “stay informed” and feed the sports cravings at any time , anywhere;  “on demand”.  Busy, on the go entrepeneurs of all types are now able to compress even more work into the inconvenient slices of time when necessity requires that they move from one place to another and apart from places of required connectivity,  via the PDA,  and laptops.  What is of highest priority and importance is reflected in what one does with such technological convenience devices.  The young have their iPods and MP3 devices for their music,  and their phones for texting.  I am ever reminded of the issue of the centrality of the church as I ponder these growths in mobile ways of “staying in touch”.  If there is a place of ultimate centrality that warrants an emphasis on directing vast resources toward enabling such perpetual connectedness,  it is the church.  We believe that our community should be the ultimate repository of our “resources for living”;  our “center” and “basic place of formation”.  This is ,  as a “center” of such significance and reach,  a place worth having “accessible resources”.  One might say that this is the cardinal principle of Religious Education.  The church,  as an “equipper of the saints”,  is a seminary for living;  a provider of curriculum and a structure for the enabling of formation in community and worship.

All of this is to say that I am an advocate for an immediate and concerted effort by the church,  by any agencies charged with communicative tasks and also of educational tasks,  to make these resources available via as many avenues as possible;  and to seek how to incorporate along with “information” and “studious material”,  the resources with which to engender conversation. As a church,  we seek to enable the local church as the locus and origination of such conversation,  but also seeking to “distribute” these conversations as widely and as “accessibly” as possible.  This means resources dedicated to the research and development of technological tools to enable such needed connectivity and amassment of online archives of conversation around a variety of topics and resources. 

The Servant Leadership School of the Church of the Saviour is one model for the kind of Formation structures that can be more widely distributed to various outposts of the kingdom of God  with the aid of electronic connectivity.  They have a website (actually in process of designing a new one last time I looked),  but one which is highly “brochure-like” and lacks the communal, interactive, blog/RSS/portal features that I consider highly desirable tools to “getting the story told” in as many ways as possible, just as Elizabeth O’Connor did so effectively as a steward of the written narrative through her books such as Call To Commitment, Journey Inward, Journey Outward, and The New Community (as well as in her later Servant Leaders, Servant Structures)

I want to help the church build online tools that keep people connected to the resources of the church, including the conversations and the stories from which those conversations emerge,  in a manner which demonstrates how we as people of the church see the church as that vital center from which we should all desire a more placebic , always-on connection. (“Placebic” as in the placebo,  the “connection” between the embryo and the womb,  the “growing of a living human being). This is the “Smart Mob” I feel the church should be enabling,  but always as “headquartered” in a particular place and a particular people.