In Real Life

This is a blog post. You read it in “cyberspace”. You may respond, you may not. Either way, it stays online. Unless you choose to hit Print – which is not recommended, for environmental reasons. Does the digital character of this interaction make it less “real” than if you were taking a walk in the park with me? Apparently, many people would think so.

Again and again you hear the thought voiced that meetings online, friendships in social networks, and digitally mediated discussions are just a shadow of the “real world”. Even the common expression IRL (In Real Life), builds on this assumption. Digital media can be good, but they can never replace the “real thing”.

Now I do believe there is a “real thing”, but I don’t believe that the digital world, the Internet, is fake, and but a poor replication of the world as it should be. But here’s the thing: all communication is mediated. Whether it is language, body language, telephone, email, or social networks, there is always something “in between” two minds interacting. Communication is indeed possible, but always mediated.

People are networking through social media. It’s not a game. This is real life. If you’re like me, most of your interactions take place online, and they’re not less real for this fact.

I post this during an Internet Evangelism seminar in England, focusing exactly on helping people to interact with their (digital) network and share the gospel with their friends in non-obtrusive, digitally mediated ways. There is potential in this, but apparently some mind-sets differ here.

Now What?

Sitting in a nice but hot office in the sun with no air-con, I realise it’s been three months since we returned to Denmark. Spring has turned to summer, much has fallen into place, and my life is arguably as stable as never before.

Just a few weeks ago, the combined efforts of ourselves and family and friends resulted in the perfect wedding day. We’re settling into our first house together, and the future looks fairly bright.

Planning the wedding has been an almost year-long endeavour, surpassed only in scale by writing my MA thesis last year. So after pulling off two such projects, what is going to be the next one? Where do I focus my energy from now on? There are several possible answers.

Obviously, building a good home and marriage needs energy and devotion. On the horizon looms writing that first book, but probably not in the very near future. My best guess is that any big projects will be within the scope of my (still) new job.

Also three months now I have been working for the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Denmark, in a newly created position of “concept developer and information officer”. This entails many interesting projects, but also hatching and nurturing a grander strategy for the church’s media work here. Strategy work takes time though, and over the next months I hope to be able to think creatively and listen to the needs and opportunities in, especially, new media. I look forward to this challenge.

Where does that leave this blog? It is evident that it has grown a bit stale recently. Is it worthwhile to resurrect it in its current state? Is a refocus necessary? Is it best to shut it down altogether and launch something more focused, perhaps in Danish? Or has the time of blogging come and gone already? If so, then I should move on to other ventures.

Whatever the outcome, I think that my online presence – especially within the fields of church, communication and media – should grow, not diminish. Finding the right outlet(s) to join the discussion should be a focus in the time to come. Stay tuned.

Who Are You?

This time I need your help.

I have been blogging now for exactly three years. It all began in St. Louis in 2005, and eventually kept on going. It has been fun, especially because of the many good comments from you, my readers. But now that some of you will have had the opportunity to know quite a bit about me, I thought it was time to turn that around and let me know a little about you.

So I’ve created a short survey for you to complete. It shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes, but will help me to know a little bit more about you, and what you think of this blog. If you’re anything like me, you actually enjoy taking surveys, especially if they’re not to long or boring. Please help me out – click here to take the survey.

Thank you for your help. And I will, of course, post the key results later.

Salvation, Facebook-style

Well Done, Caroline!

One of my favourite sports is tennis, probably even more so after watching a couple of Australian Open matches first-hand back in 2006. The sport has even more appeal now with – for the first time in decades – a Danish player with potential. Caroline Wozniacki, just 17 years old, who won the junior championship at Wimbledon in 2006, made it to the fourth round at this year’s Australian Open, quite a remarkable feat.

At this morning’s match, 4^th seeded Ana Ivanovic proved too much of a challenge. Ivanovic took the first set easily 6-1, but Wozniacki managed to get back in the game in the second set, getting two set points and forcing Ivanovic into her first tiebreak of the tournament. Eventually, Ivanovic won the match, but Wozniacki did a decent and impressive performance.

Caroline has been climbing the world ranking lately, and we should expect too see more from her. I will look forward to cheering for her in the upcoming grand slams of this year.

On another note, watching the match was a delicate matter – I have no television and even if I did, I wouldn’t have a channel that carries these tournaments. I found a great online service however: a peer-to-peer network called SopCast, which lets you watch live streams of a wide array of TV channels, mostly Asian. So my carrier last night was the Hong Kong-based (but English language) Star Sports, an ESPN-subsidy. Service was fine, no glitches or anything. Whether this is completely legal or not though, I don’t really now.

Article on Blogging

I was asked some time ago to write a piece about blogging for Adventnyt, the membership monthly from the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Denmark.

The article is now published and will be in subscribers’ mailboxes today. To read it (in Danish) or comment, click here.

Fundamentalist Adventists Create Social Networking Website

I recently received an unsolicited email from somebody touting a new website, adventplanet.com. This is supposed to be a social networking site in the like of Facebook and MySpace, aimed at only Seventh-day Adventists. On the face of it a good idea, but the more I read about it, the worse the taste in my mouth got.

The footer of the website states: “Adventplanet.com is the only website exclusively for Seventh-day Adventists.” Ok—another attempt at isolating ourselves from the world. When is that strategy ever going to win people for Christ? Haven’t we learned anything yet?

The website goes on to shout (using CAPITALS) a midnight cry against other websites, promoting itself as the only safe and reliable site for Adventists. Playing on fear always works.

“THESE ARE THE THINGS YOU SHOULD CHECK BEFORE JOINING A WEBSITE THAT SAYS ITS FOR ADVENTISTS!” Which roughly translates to: “These are our hobby-horses.” There are five points—I will comment on them individually.

1. Is The Website I Am Applying For Run Or Owned By Adventists?

Fair enough. A clear statement of ownership is good on any website.

2. Does The Site List The Site List The 28 Fundamentals Of The Seventh-Day Adventist Church

Why on earth should it? They are listed on www.adventist.org, if anyone is interested, and already receive way more attention than what is healthy, and (I believe) was intended when they were introduced in 1980.

3. Does The Website Mention The Lords Tithe

Again: why exactly should one minor belief be singled out as important in this regard? Makes no sense.

4. Does The Website Check That It’s Members Are Really Adventist?
“Adventplanet.com asks you for a one off $50 US Dollar membership sign up fee. Part of the fee is used to contact your Adventist church to confirm not just your membership but that you are in good and regular standing.”

This is outrageous. The whole concept ‘good and regular standing’ is a thing that should be kept in the past. The church is a place for sinners, not perfect people. Oh, you disagree? I take it, then, that you’re perfect? Try reading John 8.

5. Does The Website Include Smoking And Drinking In Its Search?

Again a disproportionate focus on a single issue. It is well-established that a large proportion of Seventh-day Adventists have a more accepting view of alcohol than the official party line. But it is still, sadly, a taboo in most circles (read my earlier post on this).

As long as I can remember people I know have been fighting (successfully) to change the conception that the Seventh-day Adventist is exclusive and secterian. Which I still hope and believe it is not. But some of its members sadly often do demonstrate such traits. I believe that Christians are called to be a force of good in this world, building bridges, not walls.

Of course, people may build whatever websites they want, as long as it’s legal. But adventplanet.com also states that it is their aim to “be the first Seventh-Day Adventist community website to be endorsed by the General Conference.” I certainly hope it will not come to this.

I will stick with Facebook and MySpace, and urge you to do the same.

Appreciation

Last month, the official Danish Seventh-day Adventist website, www.adventist.dk won 1st prize for Best Church-Related Web Site in the annual competition at Kristeligt Dagblad, the leading (and only) Christian daily newspaper here. Read more at ANN.

This is good news, obviously, and a great cadeau to the church here. So congratulations! I was webmaster for the site until a year ago. I’m honoured that my name was included in the ANN story, and happy for the remarks I have recieved from a lot of people. No hard feelings in this case, and I still don’t regret quitting my job.

But Thomas Müller hits right on the mark with his last comment: “I am hoping with this public acknowledgement that the church leadership realizes the potential in this media and allocates more resources.”

It is sad that due recognition for work such as this should come from outside sources, and not from the church leadership, but unfortunately it comes as no surprise. Which is probably the main reason I don’t work there anymore.

New Host

As others before me (Lars, Andreas) I have decided to make the move to WordPress. Several issues influenced my decision, notably the options for categories and static pages. Fortunately, WordPress’ import feature makes it easy to import archived entries, so my old posts are all here, with comments and everything.

The switch will make it possible for me to maintain only one presence online; instead of previously having both a blog and a static website. Thus, www.kennethbirch.dk is a merger of the former kb-adventist.blogspot.com and elefantpost.dk. Those pages will no longer be updated.

Church Websites for Dummies

The top guys of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church are gathered at the headquarters in Washington, D.C., for their annual council. For the participants this must be very important, and so they do their best to produce something that looks like results. There might be some hits, but there’s also some misses.

To this last group belongs the news that the church has agreed on a set of ‘Web site Guidelines’. The news report states that “having a series of guidelines for Web sites is important to the Adventist church’s growth on the Internet.” Why is that, again?

Ray Dabrowski calls it a “very important development”. Well, if that’s the best you can do, I’m disappointed. Unfortunately, Dabrowski doesn’t seem more visionary at the GC than he did in the TED. A ‘set of guidelines’? Wow, how cool!

If we take a look at the document itself, not all is useless, of course. Nos. 1, 8, 11 make good sense for the church, while for most of the other points, however right they might be, you’d be better off checking out useit.com or other people who actually know what they’re doing. No. 4 is sweet, but is it really necessary?

This could easily be just brushed off as a small miss for the communication department – get back on it, guys – were it not for the fact that the entire annual council actually spent time on it. Why doesn’t the responsible department have the necessary responsibility to do this themselves? Why does the main body of the church have to be involved in what can only be described as a waste of time?