4 Reasons You Won’t Find Enlightenment Online

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Brian Kiely, Digital Reformation, enlightenment, millenials, Network Generation, on-line enlightenment, on-line spirituality, One Chosen Family, spirituality, Unitarian Church of Edmonton, Unitarian Universalism, Unitarianism

A woman named Sam, from Saltspring Island in British Columbia posted this excellent piece or her blog One Chosen Family.  I became aware of it when she commented on one of my posts last week (Making “On-line” Face to Face). I pretty much agree with everything she has to say, but I will let her say it.  I have copied the whole piece but here is a link to her post directly as well.  If you click the link you will find the video clip to which she refers at the end of the post:

4 Reasons You Won’t Find Enlightenment Online.

Oh, and thanks a bunch, Sam!

One Chosen Family

spirituality through relationships

Posted on March 28, 2012

2

I recently  watched Ethan Nichtern’s  talk called  “The Internet Is Not Your Teacher.”  which explains why, if you are seeking spirituality on the internet, your meanderings are doomed to superficiality. I’ve summarized 4 reasons, drawing mostly from his talk (thanks to Buddhist Geeks for including a transcript!).

1. Wisdom is Cheap

First-off, Nichtern discusses the “cheapening of knowledge and wisdom.” In some ways, it is actually too easy to access ancient spiritual knowledge. What once would require months or years of treacherous pilgrimage now takes two keywords and search engine – all of 3 seconds. As with all things in our dual universe, this is both good and bad (the so-called  good and bad are “co-emergent” says Nichtern).

Good because every person can receive the most powerful spiritual teachings in human history literally at the touch of a button. As Nichtern jokes, “There’s not a single Vajrayana teaching that I’ve ever received an empowerment for that you couldn’t Wikipedia right now.”

Bad because there’s so much and it’s so easy to get, we don’t really pay attention to any of it. We don’t absorb and hardly even value the teachings we receive. We get what we pay for.

Nichtern explained it this way:

“In the ancient world to even learn how to follow your breath was quite a journey over mountains or requesting teachings for a long period of time. And because it was quite a journey, you took the instructions that you received as important… When you think what you’re receiving is important, you tend to take more time to absorb and integrate it into your experience, which is the whole point of how these teachings work.”

A confounding problem is that when anyone can put on their ‘guru’ hat and proclaim ultimate wisdom to the world wide web, it is nearly impossible to evaluate which teachings are accurate and which are misleading.  We spend far more time skimming and evaluating search results than we do sitting with a profound lesson delivered online.

Like the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, there is “water, water, everywhere,” but we do not value and do not drink.

2. The Scattering of ‘Surface Dharma’

Podcast Dharma, Youtube Dharma, Facebook Dharma – these are the dharmas of social media, the dharmas that expand only to 140 characters, a truncated Rumi quote on Facebook, a 3-minute YouTube video on our innermost presence that we posted to boost our blog traffic. How easily we slip in and out of online sacred space!

Nichtern says he actually loves “the fact that people can receive in their inbox a little [reminder to] just ‘be compassionate today’. And then people say, oh yeah, I got that quote from Sharon Salzberg in my inbox and I remembered to be compassionate when I was in traffic.” Personally, I greatly enjoy my Facebook feed, which is well padded with daily insights from a smattering of spiritual organizations and writers.

“That’s great,” Nichtern warns,  “But we should understand that it’s surface.”

Now surface stuff isn’t all bad. And yet too much focus on superficial messages is no help to a genuine seeker.

Why is this a problem? Nichtern says:

“Because when we dwell on the surface what starts happening is you start to be a scatterbrain. And in terms of attention, depth requires you to actually not be a scatterbrain. That’s almost the definition of depth. That you would actually be able to stay with something to penetrate it and to go deeper.”

And honestly I think we only can be profoundly influenced by so many things in a day! Also in my experience, passing around quotes and passages without taking the time to deeply study and understand them in their context makes us prone to misinterpreting, misunderstanding, and flat out missing the real message. Or worse yet, we circulate teachings on the superficial level long enough and they become cliches – meanwhile we’ve numbed ourselves to their potential wisdom.

3. The Limits of DIY Spirituality

“The interesting thing about this term [DIY] is that it started as an anti-consumerist phrase but it actually means you get to consume in the way you want,” points out Nichtern.

Spiritual development usually involves moving away from our ego (with which we are identified) to a purer, more present, more authentic state (which sounds alien when it is first explained to us). The ego is the king of DIY. To the ego, DIY spirituality means re-contextualizing spiritual teachings to enhance its survival rather than threaten it. When we seek to define our own spiritual path for ourselves, we run the risk of feeding our ‘new’ ego, our ‘spiritual’ ego instead of moving towards transcending the ego.

About his own experience with a live spiritual teacher, Nichtern says, “My teacher a lot of times says if you’re going to ask a teacher for advice you should actually do what they say. Chances are they’re going to tell you to do something you didn’t want to do in some small way. That’s what doing something good for you is, right? You have to do something that’s outside of the framework of your habitual apparatus, which means it doesn’t feel immediately good…We don’t like to give up control and freedom of choice, but this is actually what happens when we surrender to spiritual teacher.”

The escape route out of the DIY trap is to find a spiritual teacher, to choose someone who you believe through-and-through has the ‘goods,’ that is, the spiritual insight that you need. Now this has also gotten people into a lot of trouble, who were seduced by some charismatic figure whose intentions were atrociously flawed and whose teachings were baloney. So choose carefully. In 10 seconds of Googling I found a great post that offers 15 questions you should ask before seeing a guru. Surrender is preceded by careful selection and reasoning.

I can hear you pleading, “but Sam! Isn’t life is my guru? Can’t the universe be my teacher?” Absolutely. But I really want to link to this ‘touche’ Christian post I read last week called “Spiritual but not Religious? Please Stop Boring Me,” wherein Lillian Daniel writes:

“Where life with God gets rich and provocative is when you dig deeply into a tradition that you did not invent all for yourself.”

Life is your guru. Your Higher Self truly is your guru. But your ego will trick you into finding patterns where there are none, drawing conclusions out of error, and generally play with your spiritual seeking to meet its own needs for survival. You have been warned!

4. We Need to Learn from Real Live Humans

“I think if we’re going to actually have something to say to the world,” Nichtern says, “We have to participate in human sangha.”

Not online sangha, not second life or Facebook sangha, but the one with living, breathing, perspiring people, “especially a world that’s in the midst of profound loss in the sense of community, which is really odd that a profound loss of a sense of community is happening the same time that social networking is taking off.”

Lillian Daniel writes this about the person sitting next to her on the plane who finds God in “sunsets” and “walks on the beach” (note that she, nor I, discount finding God in nature):

“Thank you for sharing, spiritual but not religious sunset person. You are now comfortably in the norm for self-centered American culture, right smack in the bland majority of people who find ancient religions dull but find themselves uniquely fascinating. Can I switch seats now and sit next to someone who has been shaped by a mighty cloud of witnesses instead? Can I spend my time talking to someone brave enough to encounter God in a real human community?  Because when this flight gets choppy, that’s who I want by my side, holding my hand, saying a prayer and simply putting up with me, just like we try to do in church. “

Human relationships – with teachers yes but also with sangha, or spiritual community – are sooooooo important. These personal and intimate connections are really where the rubber meets the road. You will learn more from the divine in an argument with your spouse than you could in 10 New York Times bestsellers. The snot that the fellow meditating next to you atomizes over your shoulder and lap while he sobs will do much more for you than a Kony 2012 or equivalent YouTube tearjerker. If you want to feel spirit alive in you, in your breath and guts, then take Nichterns advice and turn your computer off for a while and go find real people:

“And that’s the key deeply understanding these teachings and making human connections with each other.”

The Internet is Not Your Teacher: The Buddhist Geeks Conference from Buddhist Geeks on Vimeo.

Religion Among the Millenials

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Brian Kiely, Digital Reformation, millenials, millennials, Network Generation, Pew Forum, Unitarian Church of Edmonton, Unitarian Universalism

Hi folks, this is a long post, but it provides great (if 2 year old data) on the shifting religious views of Millennials  Thanks to UU Minister Mark Hoelter for bringing it to wider attention

The actual Pew Forum link is http://www.pewforum.org/Age/Religion-Among-the-Millennials.aspx

Less Religiously Active Than Older Americans, But Fairly Traditional In Other Ways

POLL February 17, 2010

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In this report:
Introduction and Overview
Religious Affiliation
Worship Attendance
Other Religious Practices
Religious Attitudes and Beliefs
Social and Culture War Issues
More Information

Download the appendix (1-page PDF)
Download the full report (29-page PDF)

Introduction and Overview

MILLENIALS

This is part of a Pew Research Center series of reports exploring the behaviors, values and opinions of the teens and twenty-somethings that make up the Millennial generation.

By some key measures, Americans ages 18 to 29 are considerably less religious than older Americans. Fewer young adults belong to any particular faith than older people do today. They also are less likely to be affiliated than their parents’ and grandparents’ generations were when they were young. Fully one-in-four members of the Millennial generation – so called because they were born after 1980 and began to come of age around the year 2000 – are unaffiliated with any particular faith. Indeed, Millennials are significantly more unaffiliated than members of Generation X were at a comparable point in their life cycle (20% in the late 1990s) and twice as unaffiliated as Baby Boomers were as young adults (13% in the late 1970s). Young adults also attend religious services less often than older Americans today. And compared with their elders today, fewer young people say that religion is very important in their lives.

Yet in other ways, Millennials remain fairly traditional in their religious beliefs and practices. Pew Research Center surveys show, for instance, that young adults’ beliefs about life after death and the existence of heaven, hell and miracles closely resemble the beliefs of older people today. Though young adults pray less often than their elders do today, the number of young adults who say they pray every day rivals the portion of young people who said the same in prior decades. And though belief in God is lower among young adults than among older adults, Millennials say they believe in God with absolute certainty at rates similar to those seen among Gen Xers a decade ago. This suggests that some of the religious differences between younger and older Americans today are not entirely generational but result in part from people’s tendency to place greater emphasis on religion as they age.

A NOTE ON SOURCES AND METHODS

This report is based on data from a variety of sources, including Pew Research Center surveys, which are used primarily to compare young adults with older adults today. General Social Surveys and Gallup surveys are used primarily for cohort analyses, which compare young adults today with previous generations when they were in their 20s and early 30s. While the surveys explore similar topics, exact question wording and results vary from survey to survey.

Present-day comparisons are made between adults ages 18-29 and those 30 and older. By contrast, the cohort analyses define generations based on respondents’ year of birth. There is significant – but not complete – overlap between the two approaches. That is, in the present-day analyses, depending on the year of the survey being analyzed, some in the 18-29 age group are actually young members of Generation X (defined here as those born from 1965 to 1980) and not true members of the Millennial Generation (defined here as those born after 1980).

In their social and political views, young adults are clearly more accepting than older Americans of homosexuality, more inclined to see evolution as the best explanation of human life and less prone to see Hollywood as threatening their moral values. At the same time, Millennials are no less convinced than their elders that there are absolute standards of right and wrong. And they are slightly more supportive than their elders of government efforts to protect morality, as well as somewhat more comfortable with involvement in politics by churches and other houses of worship.

These and other findings are discussed in more detail in the remainder of this report by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. It explores the degree to which the religious characteristics and social views of young adults differ from those of older people today, as well as how Millennials compare with previous generations when they were young.

Religious Affiliation

Compared with their elders today, young people are much less likely to affiliate with any religious tradition or to identify themselves as part of a Christian denomination. Fully one-in-four adults under age 30 (25%) are unaffiliated, describing their religion as “atheist,” “agnostic” or “nothing in particular.” This compares with less than one-fifth of people in their 30s (19%), 15% of those in their 40s, 14% of those in their 50s and 10% or less among those 60 and older. About two-thirds of young people (68%) say they are members of a Christian denomination and 43% describe themselves as Protestants, compared with 81% of adults ages 30 and older who associate with Christian faiths and 53% who are Protestants.

The large proportion of young adults who are unaffiliated with a religion is a result, in part, of the decision by many young people to leave the religion of their upbringing without becoming involved with a new faith. In total, nearly one-in-five adults under age 30 (18%) say they were raised in a religion but are now unaffiliated with any particular faith. Among older age groups, fewer say they are now unaffiliated after having been raised in a faith (13% of those ages 30-49, 12% of those ages 50-64, and 7% of those ages 65 and older).

Young people’s lower levels of religious affiliation are reflected in the age composition of major religious groups, with the unaffiliated standing out from other religious groups for their relative youth. Roughly one-third of the unaffiliated population is under age 30 (31%), compared with 20% of the total population.

Data from the General Social Surveys (GSS), which have been conducted regularly since 1972, confirm that young adults are not just more unaffiliated than their elders today but are also more unaffiliated than young people have been in recent decades. In GSS surveys conducted since 2000, nearly one-quarter of people ages 18-29 have described their religion as “none.” By comparison, only about half as many young adults were unaffiliated in the 1970s and 1980s.

Among Millennials who are affiliated with a religion, however, the intensity of their religious affiliation is as strong today as among previous generations when they were young. More than one-third of religiously affiliated Millennials (37%) say they are a “strong” member of their faith, the same as the 37% of Gen Xers who said this at a similar age and not significantly different than among Baby Boomers when they were young (31%).

Worship Attendance

In the Pew Forum’s 2007 Religious Landscape Survey, young adults report attending religious services less often than their elders today. One-third of those under age 30 say they attend worship services at least once a week, compared with 41% of adults 30 and older (including more than half of people 65 and older). But generational differences in worship attendance tend to be smaller within religious groups (with the exception of Catholics) than in the total population. In other words, while young people are less likely than their elders to be affiliated with a religion, among those who are affiliated, generational differences in worship attendance are fairly small.

The long-running GSS also finds that young people attend religious services less often than their elders. Furthermore, Millennials currently attend church or worship services at lower rates than Baby Boomers did when they were younger; 18% of Millennials currently report attending religious services weekly or nearly weekly, compared with 26% of Boomers in the late 1970s. But Millennials closely resemble members of Generation X when they were in their 20s and early 30s, when one-in-five Gen Xers (21%) reported attending religious services weekly or nearly weekly.

Other Religious Practices

Consistent with their lower levels of affiliation, young adults engage in a number of religious practices less often than do older Americans, especially the oldest group in the population (those 65 and older). For example, the 2007 Religious Landscape Survey finds that 27% of young adults say they read Scripture on a weekly basis, compared with 36% of those 30 and older. And one-quarter of adults under 30 say they meditate on a weekly basis (26%), compared with more than four-in-ten adults 30 and older (43%). These patterns hold true across a variety of religious groups.

In addition, less than half of adults under age 30 say they pray every day (48%), compared with 56% of Americans ages 30-49, 61% of those in their 50s and early 60s, and more than two-thirds of those 65 and older (68%). Age differences in frequency of prayer are most pronounced among members of historically black Protestant churches (70% of those under age 30 pray every day, compared with 83% among older members) and Catholics (47% of Catholics under 30 pray every day, compared with 60% among older Catholics). The differences are smaller among evangelical and mainline Protestants.

Although Millennials report praying less often than their elders do today, the GSS shows that Millennials are in sync with Generation X and Baby Boomers when members of those generations were younger. In the 2008 GSS survey, roughly four-in-ten Millennials report praying daily (41%), as did 42% of members of Generation X in the late 1990s. Baby Boomers reported praying at a similar rate in the early 1980s (47%), when the first data are available for them. GSS data show that daily prayer increases as people get older.

Religious Attitudes and Beliefs

Less than half of adults under age 30 say that religion is very important in their lives (45%), compared with roughly six-in-ten adults 30 and older (54% among those ages 30-49, 59% among those ages 50-64 and 69% among those ages 65 and older). By this measure, young people exhibit lower levels of religious intensity than their elders do today, and this holds true within a variety of religious groups.

Gallup surveys conducted over the past 30 years that use a similar measure of religion’s importance confirm that religion is somewhat less important for Millennials today than it was for members of Generation X when they were of a similar age. In Gallup surveys in the late 2000s, 40% of Millennials said religion is very important, as did 48% of Gen Xers in the late 1990s. However, young people today look very much like Baby Boomers did at a similar point in their life cycle; in a 1978 Gallup poll, 39% of Boomers said religion was very important to them.

Similarly, young adults are less convinced of God’s existence than their elders are today; 64% of young adults say they are absolutely certain of God’s existence, compared with 73% of those ages 30 and older. In this case, differences are most pronounced among Catholics, with younger Catholics being 10 points less likely than older Catholics to believe in God with absolute certainty. In other religious traditions, age differences are smaller.

But GSS data show that Millennials’ level of belief in God resembles that seen among Gen Xers when they were roughly the same age. Just over half of Millennials in the 2008 GSS survey (53%) say they have no doubt that God exists, a figure that is very similar to that among Gen Xers in the late 1990s (55%). Levels of certainty of belief in God have increased somewhat among Gen Xers and Baby Boomers in recent decades. (Data on this item stretch back only to the late 1980s, making it impossible to compare Millennials with Boomers when Boomers were at a similar point in their life cycle.)

Differences between young people and their elders today are also apparent in views of the Bible, although the differences are somewhat less pronounced. Overall, young people are slightly less inclined than those in older age groups to view the Bible as the literal word of God. Interestingly, age differences on this item are most dramatic among young evangelicals and are virtually nonexistent in other groups. Although younger evangelicals are just as likely as older evangelicals (and more likely than people in most other religious groups) to see the Bible as the word of God, they are less likely than older evangelicals to see it as the literal word of God. Less than half of young evangelicals interpret the Bible literally (47%), compared with 61% of evangelicals 30 and older.

On this measure, too, Millennials display beliefs that closely resemble those of Generation X in the late 1990s. In the 2008 GSS survey, roughly a quarter of Millennials (27%) said the Bible is the literal word of God, compared with 28% among Gen Xers when they were young. This is only slightly lower than among Baby Boomers in the early 1980s (33%) and is very similar to the 29% of Boomers in the late 1980s who said they viewed the Bible as the literal word of God.

On still other measures of religious belief, there are few differences in the beliefs of young people compared with their elders today. Adults under 30, for instance, are just as likely as older adults to believe in life after death (75% vs. 74%), heaven (74% each), hell (62% vs. 59%) and miracles (78% vs. 79%). In fact, on several of these items, young mainline Protestants and members of historically black Protestant churches exhibit somewhat higher levels of belief than their elders.

Young people who are affiliated with a religion are more inclined than their elders to believe their own religion is the one true path to eternal life (though in all age groups, more people say many religions can lead to eternal life than say theirs is the one true faith). Nearly three-in-ten religiously affiliated adults under age 30 (29%) say their own religion is the one true faith leading to eternal life, higher than the 23% of religiously affiliated people ages 30 and older who say the same. This pattern is evident among all three Protestant groups but not among Catholics.

Interestingly, while more young Americans than older Americans view their faith as the single path to salvation, young adults are also more open to multiple ways of interpreting their religion. Nearly three-quarters of affiliated young adults (74%) say there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their faith, compared with 67% of affiliated adults ages 30 and older.

Social and Culture War Issues

Young people are more accepting of homosexuality and evolution than are older people. They are also more comfortable with having a bigger government, and they are less concerned about Hollywood threatening their values. But when asked generally about morality and religion, young adults are just as convinced as older people that there are absolute standards of right and wrong that apply to everyone. Young adults are also slightly more supportive of government efforts to protect morality and of efforts by houses of worship to express their social and political views.

According to the 2007 Religious Landscape Survey, almost twice as many young adults say homosexuality should be accepted by society as do those ages 65 and older (63% vs. 35%). Young people are also considerably more likely than those ages 30-49 (51%) or 50-64 (48%) to say that homosexuality should be accepted. Stark age differences also exist within each of the major religious traditions examined. Compared with older members of their faith, significantly larger proportions of young adults say society should accept homosexuality.

In the 2008 GSS survey, just over four-in-ten (43%) Millennials said homosexual relations are always wrong, similar to the 47% of Gen Xers who said the same in the late 1990s. These two cohorts are significantly less likely than members of previous generations have ever been to say that homosexuality is always wrong. The views of the various generations on this question have fluctuated over time, often in tandem.

Roughly half of young adults (52%) say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. On this issue, young adults express slightly more permissive views than do adults ages 30 and older. However, the group that truly stands out on this issue is people 65 and older, just 37% of whom say abortion should be legal in most or all cases.

Interestingly, this pattern represents a significant change from earlier polling. Previously, people in the middle age categories (i.e., those ages 30-49 and 50-64) tended to be more supportive of legal abortion, while the youngest and oldest age groups were more opposed. In 2009, however, attitudes toward abortion moved in a more conservative direction among most groups in the population, with the notable exception of young people. The result of this conservative turn among those in the 30-49 and 50-64 age brackets means that their views now more closely resemble those of the youngest age group, while those in the 65-and-older group now express the most conservative views on abortion of any age group.

Surveys also show that large numbers of young adults (67%) say they would prefer a bigger government that provides more services over a smaller government that provides fewer services. Among older Americans, only 41% feel this way. Fewer young people than older people see their moral values as under assault from Hollywood; one-third of adults under age 30 agree that Hollywood and the entertainment industry threatens their values, compared with 44% of people 30 and older. And more than half of young adults (55%) believe that evolution is the best explanation for the development of human life, compared with 47% of people in older age groups. These patterns are seen both in the total population and within a variety of religious traditions, though the link between age and views on evolution is strongest among Catholics and members of historically black Protestant churches.

But differences between young adults and their elders are not so stark on all moral and social issues. For instance, more than three-quarters of young adults (76%) agree that there are absolute standards of right and wrong, a level nearly identical to that among older age groups (77%). More than half of young adults (55%) say that houses of worship should speak out on social and political matters, slightly more than say this among older adults (49%). And 45% of young adults say that the government should do more to protect morality in society, compared with 39% of people ages 30 and older.

GSS surveys show Millennials are more permissive than their elders are today in their views about pornography, but their views are nearly identical to those expressed by Gen Xers and Baby Boomers when members of those generations were at a similar point in their life cycles. About one-in-five Millennials today say pornography should be illegal for everyone (21%), similar to the 24% of Gen Xers who said this in the late 1990s and the 22% of Boomers who took this view in the late 1970s. Data for the Silent and Greatest generations at similar ages are not available, but data from the 1970s onward suggest that people become more opposed to pornography as they age.

Similarly, Millennials at the present time stand out from other generations for their opposition to Bible reading and prayer in schools, but they are less distinctive when compared with members of Generation X or Baby Boomers at a comparable age. During early adulthood, about half of Boomers (51%) and Gen Xers (54%) said they approved of U.S. Supreme Court rulings that banned the required reading of the Lord’s Prayer or Bible verses in public schools; 56% of Millennials took this view in 2008. Generation X and the Boomer generation have become less supportive of the court’s position over time, while the pattern in the views of the Silent and Greatest generations has been less clear.

More Information

For other treatments of religion among young adults in the U.S. and how they compare with older generations, see, for example, Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults by Christian Smith and Patricia Snell (2009) and After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty- and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion by Robert Wuthnow (2007).

Download the appendix: Selected Religious Beliefs and Practices among Ages 18-29 by Decade (1-page PDF)

Download the full report (29-page PDF)

This analysis was written by Allison Pond, Research Associate; Gregory Smith, Senior Researcher; and Scott Clement, Research Analyst, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Photo credit: Aldo Murillo/iStockPhoto

Making “On-line” Face to Face

Lots of people like to talk about “on-line communities” and sing their praises.  Just about as many people like to disparage them for not being “real”.  Like a of of things, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle – and perhaps involves a more fluid concept of ‘community’.

Mary-Anne Parker

I was chatting about this … in person, over a glass of wine J …  with Mary-Anne Parker, the Lifespan Learning Co-ordinator at the Unitarian Church of Saskatoon.  She is a frequent Skype buddy who was visiting with her family last week.  We wrestled with how to build bridges between these worlds.  As churches go forward in the digital age, maybe we need to seek some happy medium, programs that allow us to reach a non-traditional ‘congregation’, and that also provide chances to people into face to face contact.  Fortunately there are already tech platforms that can help that happen.

But let me start by comparing virtual and in person meetings:

On the plus side of the on-line community are qualities like immediacy; permeability (people can come and go easily); the ability to find people who share your interests without concern for geography.  And such communities can be inclusive of race, age, gender and most other categories because involvement is based on interest.

I serve on the Executive of the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists.  We meet with Go-to-Meeting and Skype (for smaller groups). Our on-line meetings include a Canadian (me), an American, two Brits, a Norwegian (well, actually an American in Norway), a Burundian, a Transylvanian, an Australian and a Filipino.  We talk, we know something of each others’ lives and we get a lot of work done.  Without the web, those meetings simply couldn’t happen with such efficiency.   Mary-Anne meets with fellow professional Religious Educators via Google+ using Hangouts function- and Skype on a regular basis; to her it reinforces connections already made and a way to maintain relationships, but does it deepen them the way face to face interactions do?  She’s not convinced.

That is one limitation of such communities, and there are others.   Even as it allows a chance to connect with folks far away, it places limits on the scope of that communication.   On-line conferences or meetings only last for so long and only one person can talk at a time.  Thanks to video we can pick up more of the visual aspects of communication, but not all of them. Some say that as much as 80% of human communication is non-verbal.  Some of that gets lost, especially the glances and signals passed between folks who aren’t speaking.  And of course the physical contacts are lost.  On-line hugs just aren’t as comforting.

So what can we do?  Reflecting on small group dynamics and planning Mary-Anne shared that she once ran a coffee house in a small town in Alberta.  To stimulate business (and, I think, her brain) she and her partner started Philosopher’s Cafe nights, where folks could chat about pre-planned topics in a comfortable and caffeine fueled setting.  She figured that was an adaptable model that could work in both realms.  How?

Well, say we set-up our Unitarian Cafe.  We already have a model coming from Small Group Ministries.  It’s a simple format with an opening reading, a check-in, sharing of readings on a topic, time for reflection and then discussion.  Many of our churches have them, but they are meant for groups committed to meeting and getting to know one another deeply over time.  Still the framework may be transferable.

As another example, Mary-Anne has a Linked-in friend named Rebekah who runs Reasonable Woman and Saskatoon Secular Family Network via Facebook Groups where ideas are posted on line and once a month members meet face to face in Saskatoon to discuss a favourite topic.  Mary-Anne wants to steal that idea and work it into her congregation’s life.

So why not set up a Unitarian Cafe meeting site or Facebook page in your town?  There are a bunch of platforms available.  Most 12 year olds can tell you which ones work…

Next, settle on a few topics (schedule for a few months, eh?) and start some initial discussion.  “Here is the topic.  Here are the things a couple of knowledgeable people have to say,”  Perhaps we offer a link to a YouTube clip, a TED Talk, some web pages or -gasp!- a book reference.  Folks are welcome to respond on-line.

At the same time publicize the same material in the church among folks who like more traditional forms of connection:  newsletters, orders of service, coffee hour recruiting.  Offer Facebook tutorials for those interested in joining in the on-line interaction.

But here’s the key, call a Unitarian Cafe meeting!  Real people in real time in a real place.  Folks bring their best ideas and get to discuss with one another with a facilitator hosting.  If a lot of people come, have small table talk groups.  Heck, you could even have a live feed happening on a projection screen with geographically distant folks adding their views as well.

And Mary-Anne just Tweeted she wants chicken wings at the cafe… but that’s another story!

CBC’s ‘Q’…and Are There Enough Hymnals?

Tags

Brian Kiely, CBC radio, CBC/Q, Church social networking, Digital Reformation, Jian Ghomeshi, liberal ministry, Q radio, Unitarian Church of Edmonton, Unitarian Universalism

Next month I’m co-leading a workshop on all of this ‘web stuff’ for the UU Ministers of Canada.  I’m working with Rev. Meg Roberts of BC and ministry student Liz James of Saskatchewan.  Yesterday we were having a Skype call planning our event.

Hmm, a three-way computer conference call.  It barely deserves mention in this kind of blog anymore so commonplace has it become, eh?

Anyway, we decided to accept an offer to lead worship for our colleagues before our 3 hour session and chatted briefly about what it might be like.  At one point one of us asked, “Will there be enough hymnals?”  There was a pause, and then, “We have computers, a projector and a screen, and we are talking about technology.  Do we NEED actual books?”

In a workshop on how technology might change the way we do ministry, the least we can do is play with how our gadgets can enhance a worship experience.  So our brief service will be paperless, and I rather expect there will be some use of video as well.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love our hymnbook.  My personal copy was the second one sold at GA the year it came out.  That said, there is one theory, especially in evangelical circles, that projected lyrics mean people have their heads up and can see one another as they sing.  It makes for a more communal experience.  The UU Minister’s Association used that to good effect at our continental Convocation a few years back.  Announcements, shared readings, hymns and even meditation images were all projected for the 500 participants.

But I love my hymnbook, and I love books generally.  I do have an electronic reader, but nothing beats turning paper pages for me.  That said, I have a feeling that ministry is going to have to adapt a bit in the coming years.  We Unitarian Universalists have been “People of the Book(s)” for a very long time.  I can’t imagine there are very many book genres that haven’t been part of a worship service at one time.  A minister arrives in a new town and the one of the first questions asked is, “Where’s the best bookstore?”

But I fear that if we limit ourselves exclusively to books, we will fail to reach a lot of potential UU’s who stimulate their brains with different media.  And for some people there is a faint whiff of elitism attached to sermons with too many footnotes.  Certainly some topics will best be addressed bookishly, and some sermons will be devoted to specific books and their ideas.  For example, I am planning a service Alain de Botton’s Religion for Atheists.

I guess my point is that we choose only way of worship at our peril.  The world doesn’t work that way anymore.  That thought hit home yesterday when I listened to Jian Ghomeshi’s opening remarks on CBC’s mid-morning program Q.  It started as an afternoon show and now anchors the key mid- morning slot across the country.

What’s Q? it started as the hip culture show meant to appeal to Gen XY, but they took risks.  As the host noted the show wanted to offer:

cultural affairs, arts, debate and hopefully some entertainment to the country…We stretched the definition of culture wide to include everything from punk music to literature to sports to international politics…We’ve done it in large part through larger conversations and debates, long form interviews we were told would not work in this new ADD world.  We strove to let ideas take flight… combating a hyper-active sound byte culture...

In other words the show does everything that many ‘net watchers think is entirely wrong for this new digital age.  But it’s working!

Jian was marking the show’s fifth anniversary.  I like Q, though having been a devoted Morningside fan, that like was slow to develop. Morningside was the long running predecessor of Q hosted by national treasure the late Peter Gzowski.

Why mention this?  In his remarks, Jian noted, “Q now reaches more people with this show than CBC ever has in this time slot.”  Really??? YOU BEAT OUT ST. PETER???

And then I thought about it.  Peter was an old newspaper man who did radio. Period.  Every couple of years he also published a book of show excerpts called some variant of The Morningside Papers.  But as Q has grown, they have expanded their web presence.  They have an excellent webpage and blog that invites live commentary during the show.  They are broadcast on satellite and the internet and are even carried by some American public radio stations.  Podcasts of shows are available (free) through the website archive or on iTunes.  You can even “watch what you hear” on the website or on some upper cable channel.  And Jian Tweets constantly and the Facebook page is always up to date.  Phew!

The point is you can listen to Q, watch Q, and read Q.  You can get to it through radio or computer or even TV wherever and whenever you want.  And it’s working.  Of course the quality of the program is also consistently good.  All the access in the world won’t get audience if the audience isn’t interested.

For me Q offers a lesson from which churches can learn.  Perhaps we don’t have the resources to do all they do, but that doesn’t have to stop us from asking how we can enhance what we do by repackaging it for various platforms.  Many congregations already offer video or audio recordings of sermons, although we might start thinking of offering five minute ‘sermonettes’ – condensed versions of some presentations that suit a shorter form.  Here’s an example of one Liz James did on the Sacred Lego  (the music was added by the posting site).  We can occasionally use video clips in services instead of traditional readings and so on.  All it takes is some imagination and a willingness to extend comfort zones.

What are nonprofits doing with social media? Six interesting stats

Tags

Brian Kiely, Church social networking, Digital Reformation, katya andresen, liberal ministry, millenials, non-profit marketing, slacktivism, social network review, Unitarian Church of Edmonton, Unitarian Universalism

Katya Andresen is a marketing expert specializing in non-profits and marketing  ‘good causes’.  She wrote the book Robin Hood Marketing: Stealing Corporate Savvy to Sell Just Causes.  She also writes Katya’s Non-Profit Marketing Blog.  Stefan Jonason drew my attention to this one and it seemed good to repost, especially for those among us who are promoting social justice work in our congregations and our movement.  Her links are live and lead to a lot of interesting ideas and figures.  Enjoy! B

Welcome to my blog on nonprofit marketing, fundraising, social media and doing good in the world better and faster. I’m glad you’re here.

What are nonprofits doing with social media?  Six interesting stats

• Fri, April 06 2012
• Filed under: Social networking and web 2.0

It’s the week of studies!  First we had the eBenchmarks study, then the Convio benchmarks study, and now the Blackbaud social media benchmark study.  It’s an opportunity to see how you stack up in all different ways online.

The Blackbaud study shows despite limited budgets and staffing, nonprofits continue to find value in their growing social networks.

Here are six key findings:

• 98% have a Facebook page with an average community size of over 8k fans.
• Average Facebook and Twitter communities grew by 30% and 81%, respectively.
• Average value of a Facebook Like is $214.81 over 12 months following acquisition.
• 73% allocate half of a full time employee to managing social networking activities.
• 43% budget $0 for their social networking activities.
• The top 3 factors for success are: strategy, prioritization, dedicated staff

It’s interesting to view this data against the backdrop of discussion about so-called slacktivism.  I’m quite weary of that term as I feel it undervalues low-effort actions as a first step toward a conversation with potential supporters.  This Sortable graphic pulls from data from the Georgetown Center for Social Impact Communication to make that point.  (View the original here if it’s hard to see.)

wordle.net

Tags

Anna Isaacs, Brian Kiely, Church social networking, Digital Reformation, lifespan learning, meditation, religious community, spirituality, Unitarian Church of Edmonton, Unitarian Universalism

Over the next while I will be posting resources I stumble across or that people suggest, resources that might be useful in this reformation discussion or in letting UUs and others bring technology -gently and easily- into church life.

This fun resource is called a Wordle.  Anna Isaacs suggested it in a recent comment on this blog.  It can be used in blogs and web pages or printed for a program cover.   You might even in use it in worship services (on-line or in church) as a projected image for meditation and contemplation.  It could become an exercise in some Lifespan Learning program – rather like making a word mandala.  It’s kind of fun and has lots of uses.

It’s also dead simple and entirely free.  Go to wordle.net, , click “Create” and then type in a bunch of words and click ‘Go’.  Voila! Once it’s up you can delete some words, which rearranges the design or go back to the word list and add more.  There are colour selections and probably other features I haven’t figured out yet.  Seriously, this took five minutes of simply typing in words that seemed appropriate to this blog.  After that it was point and click till I had a format and type face I liked.  It can be printed, shared, exported and used in all sorts of ways.

(I ‘printed’ this as a pdf file then saved the pdf as a jpeg so I could post it here.  For some reason Wirdpress didn’t like their embedding code, so I did it myself.)

Have you got a favorite app or site you would like to suggest?  Add a comment or write me at brikie@aol.com.  Thanks!

Spring Break, Dinosaurs and “Text and a prayer”

Tags

Brian Kiely, Church social networking, Digital Reformation, liberal ministry, social network review, Stefan Jonason, Unitarian, Unitarian Church of Edmonton, Unitarian Universalism

Hi all,  This post starts entirely off topic…but then comes back.

Sorry if I have been silent for awhile, but last week was Spring Break here in Alberta and, as you can see, I took my daughters to Drumheller to the world famous Royal Tyrrell Museum home of Alberta’s amazing dinosaur collection.  And as you can see from the pic, the girls were feeling some attitude having just climbed up the inside of the World’s Largest Dinosaur (86 feet high and 151 feet long) and stared through its jaws.

OK Back on Topic!

But I have been tracking some interesting posts, articles and broadcasts which I will share with you in the coming days.  I am preparing both to participate in the CUC Symposium in Ottawa in May, and working with colleagues Liz James and Meg Roberts to prepare a workshop for the Canadian ministers at the retreat which follows.  No doubt some of their insights will be working their way into this blog.

Today, I offer an article from the Winnipeg Free Press brought to my attention by Stefan Jonason via Facebook.  Seriously, ask Stefan to friend you.  Really.  His short posts on life, politics (mostly Canadian), theology, philosophy and…oh yeah, life…are always worthy of a read.  I love his stuff, but maybe it’s just cause we’re both middle aged guys.  Nonetheless, he is a UU minister who has defined one way to make social media part of his working life.  Stefan has created a simple on-line addition to his ministry that I admire.

The specific article below speaks of a Christian pastor in Winnipeg who welcomes text messages during the service and includes some rules for congregational etiquette on the practice.  It’s a whole new way of doing “Sharing Time”.  It’s not for every congregant and probably not for every minister, but it does raise provocative questions about the degree to which we let technology come inside the church.  Enjoy.

Text and a prayer.

Marketing in a Crisis

Tags

Brian Kiely, Carnival cruise disaster, Digital Reformation, media strategy, social network review, terry o'Reilly, under the influence, Unitarian Church of Edmonton, Unitarianism church

Terry O’Reilly has long been a major player in Canadian marketing and advertising.

Terry O'Reilly

In the last few years he has created CBC radio programs, the first called The Age of Persuasion about the ad industry, and just recently Under the Influence about marketing.  His programs are insightful, witty and fascinating.  You can find some of the podcasts through the links and more on iTunes.  Sorry to start a church blog this way, but this is one of my favorite all-time radio series…it makes walking my dog in any weather a joy.

So why mention him?  I was walking my dog in the cold winter rain the other night and listening to his episode on Marketing in a Crisis.  Now just to point out the link in the title leads you to the show’s website where you can read the script and watch supporting video clips…or you can listen to the show on this streaming audio link …or if you want to walk your dog while listening to the podcast, you can get it free on iTunes.  You know, the guy knows how to market his show!

Ok, so getting back to why read or listen to this episode.  About 8:30 minutes into the show he describes the marketing disaster that accompanied the real life disaster of the Carnival Cruise ship sinking off the Tuscan coast.  O’Reilly argues that companies need a crisis marketing plan.  After parsing the Carnival mess, he goes on to recount the story of Tylenol outlining how they literally wrote the book on successfully marketing in a crisis many years ago.

The reality is that churches run into crises as well.  Sometimes members or ministers perpetrate criminal acts.  Sometimes in our liberalism we take on causes that are controversial – maybe not in our eyes, but sometimes in the eyes of folks who don’t like our theology much…and they call us names or worse.  It’s likely we won’t know what it will be till it happens.  I guess that’s why they call it a crisis.

In Marketing in a Crisis, O’Reilly outlines a couple of simple ideas that can form the cornerstone of any response strategy:

First, the company and its PR firm has to implement its crisis strategy right away. Assuming, of course, they have one. If they do, it usually means gathering all the available information, assessing the situation, and drafting initial communication for the press.

Next, a company has to display visible leadership. One of the first things on the crisis checklist is to suspend all advertising. But in the case of Carnival, reports stated that the company didn’t pull its advertising until one week after the event.

Another vitally important factor is that the company can’t just be working its heart out to deal with a catastrophe, but it has to be seen working its heart out.

In a crisis, communication is everything.

In the days following the disaster, it also became clear that Carnival had no plan for dealing with social media.

Its main Facebook page continued to offer the usual updates on trips and deals. CEO Arison, an avid Tweeter, went virtually silent. Six full days after the accident, a post appeared on the Carnival Facebook page saying that out of respect, they were going to, quote: “Take a bit of a break from posting on our social channels.”

But after virtually no online activity for nearly a week, people started to post negative comments on ship safety, and shock over Carnival’s 30% discount offer to the Costa passengers.

By contrast the makers of Tylenol handled the crisis of someone poisoning several bottles of their medication extremely well as the show details.  But the most important factor is why they did what they did:

The way Johnson & Johnson handled the crisis was revealing of the company’s integrity – which included giving the grieving families counseling and financial compensation, even though the company was not at fault.

Should a crisis befall us, as church folks we first have to look to our Principles and take a little time to think through not the most expedient thing to do, but the right thing to do.  In the long run using the crisis to call us back to our best selves will be what gets us through.

As we think about implementing social media strategies in general, O’Reilly reminds us that we have to also set up some plans for what to do when things go wrong, either in church or in the world.  Back on the morning of 9-11 when the towers fell, we had a staff meeting that quickly became a sharing circle.  From that came the idea that we hold hold a supportive vigil service that night and the word went out mostly by phone and some by e-mail. It worked.  It wasn’t a church crisis, per se, but it was a crisis for church folk.  Caring for people is what we do.

I have drafted a document that might be a place to start in thinking out a congregational plan,  Check it out:  Crisis Management Plan: Media

Also here are some helpful links:

“Ready for a Crisis?”

SEVEN DIMENSIONS OF CRISIS COMMUNICATION MANAGEMENT:
A STRATEGIC ANALYSIS AND PLANNING MODEL^©

Yes, sorry, this is another thing for your To Do list, but spending some time setting down an even rudimentary policy for how your congregation, and who in your congregation,  can step up in a crisis can save grief and actually help the image of your congregation.

A Case of Managing Message in Mixed Media

Tags

Brian Kiely, church marketing, Church social networking, Digital Reformation, social network review, The Guardian, Three Little Pigs, Unitarian Church of Edmonton

The UK newspaper The Guardian released this video about three weeks ago.  The simple purpose is to show consumers how The Guardian now both follows and covers news on several media platforms.  But the genius of the piece is the use of an old morality fable to demonstrate a new reality.

Enjoy the cleverness of the message as you watch this, and then read on…

…and thanks to Kathy S. for bringing it to my attention!

My favorite bit is “There’s no way he could have blown down those housest, he had asthma!”

In the flashing visuals and voice overs we see much of what is good and bad about the instant info access we now enjoy.  In the course of two minutes, the basic story of the third big boiling the BB Wolf gets spun several ways as more facts emerge.  And through it all people comment, sometimes adding misinformation to the story, sometimes empathizing with one character or another.  And it beautifully illustrates how many of us shape the information we receive from whatever source through the filters of our own biases and preferences.  Homeowners support the pig’s right of self-defense.  Others are troubled by the violence of the pig’s respnse to the wolf.  You don’t have to have watched much cable news  to know the truth of this wee morality play.

Of course, the full story doesn’t emerge until the trial, probably months later.  That’s months of people telling and retelling the story according to partial information and personally biased opinions.  Where lies truth.

“OK, Kiely, what’s that all got to do with church?”

Like it or not, that’s the way information spreads even in church.  Anyone who has spent a lot of time working in churches – paid or volunteer – knows that even with simpler technology – like word of mouth – misinformation can get out there.  This ad merely reminds us that the information -whether correct or incorrect – now spreads faster and in more media forms.

I would argue that this is one reason why churches and the people who work there, are going to need to develop a lot more than just a web site in the near future.  I am coming to believe we need to develop a very intentional social media strategy.

I think I have mentioned elsewhere that when I come back from sabbatical, I expect to start managing some aspects of my work week differently.  Instead of occasionally answering the phone and tending to e-mail…oh, yeah, and actually seeing people… I will have to work with church leaders to manage social media like Facebook posts and tweets on behalf of the church, attend to what’s going on in currently moribund church Facebook messaging page, encourage content from members and friends and so on.

Why?  Well, for one thing, that’s where some people are looking for us to be and that’s where the want to interact with our Unitarian message.  For a second thing – and some will no doubt feel uncomfortable with this marketing approach – we must control our own message and not let others define us based on rumour or their different theological points of view.  In this US Republican nomination campaign, broadly defined liberal religion has been under attack by those who would turn the USA into a Christian state.  My good UU friends in the US are not sitting idly by, but are countering with strong social media campaigns of their own. We can all learn from that.

For a third and final thing, not being there represents a large hole in our attraction/marketing strategy.  When I started in ministry, district staff used to preach (sometimes in vain) the importance of the Yellow Pages listing so that newcomers to town and visitors could just find us.  Anyone still use the Yellow Pages?  Just as that listing was vital 25 years ago (along with the ad in the newspaper religion page), an up to date, vibrant and comprehensive web and social media presence is growing in importance.

I know, I know, some reader is saying, “But I hate Facebook…or Twitter…or whatever.”  No problem, except that if you are in a position of leadership, the people with whom you might need to connect embrace that technology.  Wise leaders find the crowd, they don’t wait for the crowd to find them.

In my next post I want to direct you to a marketing program on radio that describes the need for a crisis plan in marketing.  Stay tuned.

– The Size of My Church is 37 x Larger Than We Assume

Tags

Church social networking, June Herold, social network review, The NewUU, UU Church of Arlington VA, UUCAVA

Hi Friends,

June Herold recently connected with me because she discovered this blog.  What a nice piece of good fortune it was for me!  We had a wonderful hour long Skype call that left me very excited.  June worked for AOL in the days when they were doing some really creative stuff in social networking, and continues to work in the field.

She is also doing great stuff in her UU Church in Arlington, VA creating a social networking ministry with great result.  The 11 slide presentation below will give you a first taste of how one church is successfully venturing into the field, creating ways for members to create large amounts of content, which, in turns, creates large amounts of buzz as they post their contributions through their various networks.  I invite you to take a look at this review/overview.  Thanks June

– The Size of My Church is 37 x Larger Than We Assume.

If you want to check out their site, it’s UUCAVA.org

And you can visit or follow June’s own excellent blog called The New UU