I guess I was seduced away by Facebook, as have so many, and now the only real Bloggers that remain are darned good ones who tend to specialise on one subject or another! On the contrary, I'm all over the place. Always have been!
One of the reasons I'm back today, I guess, is that there have been hints of my lack of communication. I run two websites, am constantly on Facebook, sometimes use Twitter, and publish weekly pew sheets for two congregations and a colourful, newsy Parish Magazine. I actually thought that I was communicating quite well. Perhaps not, however, when I look at large chunks of the folk I really want to communicate with.
I read an excellent piece about a fortnight ago, titled, "An iPhone Priest in a Typewriter Congregation". It certainly brought me up short, for very few in my congregations use Facebook, Twitter or look at websites, however important these things may be in modern communication and basic IT.
Pew sheets are easily discarded without being properly read, and folk skim through magazines and miss a lot. That's modern world trends, where we don't sit down to read properly.
This leaves the spoken word, and that doesn't reach many. Through Chinese Whispers, that, too, can be distorted. In saying that, texts and Facebook posts along with Tweets can always be perceived in a different manner in which you wrote them, and a smiley face doesn't stop anyone believing your 'joke' was anything other than a barbed comment!
We live in difficult days, yet in days when communication can be instant and information at our fingertips. Some of my typewriter friends long for the day when an angry letter could be written in the evening, but in the morning, we decide it's not really something we should put in the hands of a postman!
And, aye, there's something in that!
http://millennialpastor.net/2015/07/03/on-being-an-iphone-pastor-for-a-typewriter-church/
http://millennialpastor.net/2015/07/03/on-being-an-iphone-pastor-for-a-typewriter-church/
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