Chumdinger

It was a great weekend at this years Christian Web Conference at Biola University. First, I must admit that this was my first time attending something like this and was really encouraged to be in the presence of some really smart Jesus loving techies (not to be confused with Jesus loving trekkies which may or may not have their own gathering).

Over the course of 2 days, we heard from some great speakers (listed here). And I had the pleasure of meeting new friends and catching up with old ones- a lot of whom I now follow on Twitter.

Here are some thoughts and observations from my experiences at CWC ’09.

Friday started with a great reminder that we need to be rooted in Christ in all that we do. That first and foremost, we need to be on the right path with the guy upstairs- because that dictates all that we do going forward. And that in all that we do, we need to be ‘speaking, truthing, and loving’ as Tim Challies eloquently put it.

Another great point is that New Media is a tool. It’s not inherently good or evil. It’s a rock. It’s a hammer. It’s a guitar. You can use it to build or create something amazing, or you can use it to tear down and destroy.

And then there was the debate about traditional church vs. church online. Can Jesus be gloried in a virtual medium? Can people be discipled over the internet? And lots of other philosophical, moral, and ethical questions that folks will continue to discuss long for a long time to come.

One thing that I took away from all of this is that online interaction should lead to real life offline physical interaction. I feel (as so many others do) that you just can’t substitute face to face contact. Things may change in the future as the limits of technology increase but sermons on video, Twitter during services, prayer requests via email, Facebook/Flickr/Loopt/Friendster to share our lives (ok, maybe not Friendster) – all these things have the commonality of leading to a building of community in person.

It was great to follow the #tweetCWC hashtag on Tweetdeck as the weekend was going on. The discussion was happening online as the discussions were being lead by speakers in their sessions. I got to know a lot of these folks via their Tweets before I got to meet them in person (by the way, if any of you are around Bel Air Pres, let me know and I’ll take you out to coffee).

Lastly, I loved how we talked more about the “why” and “should we” as opposed to talking about the “how do I”. This reminds me of when I was at UCLA in the design school. The professors thought theory. That’s it. Context, interaction, flow, usability, color, imagery, etc. And it was up to us as students to teach each other the software applications. While I didn’t like it back then, I really do appreciate it now because as the medium has changed, the design theory has remained the same (anyone still remember Quark, Director, GoLive, coding by hand?).

And that’s true with new media as it relates to ministry. Who knows what technology will be like in 10 years (ok, maybe John Carley knows) but what I do know now is that Christ’s message remains the same. And like the newness of guitars and organs in the last centuries, all these social media tools that we use now will change in the years to come. So we must continue to spread the love and grace of Christ. Online and offline. In every medium of our lives.

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p.s. I would like to engage in the “how do I use these tools more effectively” discussion too. A lot of you doing it way better than I am and I’d like to learn from it.