How you are getting "Involved" ?

First, How might this technology might affect the dynamics within a local body of believers in a congregation?

Email communication from church leadership to wired members and communication between members is already taking place in many affluent, middle class, educated churches (maybe in a quarter of the 360,000 congregations if I had to guess – although General Social Survey data from 2000 showed that of those who receive personal email 13% got it from church members). It is quite common for churches to have regular weekly clergy email announcements or electronic versions of their newsletters, and some churches also have electronic prayer requests thru email, bulletin boards or listserves.

This, no doubt, enhances the lines of communication, but it also is mediated interaction and may take the place of the culture building member to member actions of communicating across the fence or over a cup of coffee or even gossiping on the phone. An electronic newsletter from the pastor is not the same as a visit and email gossip is nothing like verbal rumor mongering – email leaves a "paper trail"

A second possible technological implication has to do with power and identity.

The creation of church web sites, which are seldom initiated, undertaken, or maintained by the minister, empowers a lay person, and often marginal techie," to take a very active role in the church. Likewise, maintenance of the web site puts this significant public relations tool in the hands of an "ordinary member" rather than one of the power players.

On the other hand, embrace of the Internet as a primary mode of communication in a church can create a two-class system within the membership – since even in the most wired churches a large percentage (as much as 30-40 percent of members) may not be online. It is these excluded members who may already be the most marginalized such as the older members, the less affluent, or the less educated.

Handout 3 - PCUSA and US Congregations Study

Perhaps the most significant implication of a wired reality for a church is its public presentation.

Posting sermons, newsletters, bulletins, and prayer requests on web sites or email lists "uncovers" and "exposes" the inner workings of a congregation to outside observation.

Positively, these technologies open up the organization and make its moral, educational, spiritual resources more available – potentially spreading its influence to the world.

But this exposure to an external world carries with it potential difficulties for the congregation’s dynamics, such as:

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Church leaders may begin to receive email requests for pastoral aid, advice, or information that can diminish one’s time for congregational duties.
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Tangible, physical membership boundaries are blurred as an electronic "participant" can listen to a sermon, read the newsletter, and even communicate with staff and members without filling a pew on Sunday morning.
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Likewise, as numerous interim ministers (who fill in after one pastor leaves and before another is chosen) have complained to me -- because of the Internet the former pastor never really leaves a church’s leadership dynamics. Members can remain connected to the old pastor, reading his or her sermons posted to the web and chatting thru email or IM. The new minister must compete with the cache of the former leader.
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Additionally, an Internet savvy membership can also raise new questions, worship practices and theologies gathered from the four corners of the web that are completely foreign to a congregation.

Finally, and most importantly, although posting a congregation’s interpersonal communications to a web site does make it more available it also has the potential to blur the divide between a private and public organizational reality. The act of making something publicly accessible alters its reality.

Just as TV cameras radically altered the behavior and demeanor of televangelists and their churches, so too does the potential exist for the web and Internet technologies to reshape the character and identity of a congregation.

It is an accepted fact that individuals often either intentionally or unconsciously alter their online persona, whether height and weight, or even gender as they chat and interact in cyber space.

Is it that much of a stretch to assume that an organization won’t also adopt a persona online – fabricate a digital identity – which then acts back upon the organization and alters its identity and even functioning by having to live up to an html image it created?

I don’t know if this or my other speculations will be long-term effects of a congregation which fully embraces Internet modes of communication and interaction, but it is an issue that I intend to explore over the next several years.