Tofu on the Facebook Pizza

I unfriended (Facebook) a family member in December over the poisonous speech of her friends in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. We’ve since re-friended (if that’s a thing), but the episode taught me something about social media and meaningful speech.

Here’s what happened:

Only hours after the shooting, the family member in question posted something to their Facebook wall that amounted to, “Don’t start talking about gun control. Guns don’t kill people . . . ” Now, no one learning the news from Connecticut was in any kind of emotional state to engage in rational conversation about it, yours truly included. I felt compelled to respond, though, so I hastily commented, “How can you defend guns right now? Seriously, how?”

The next several hours unleashed an increasingly abusive stream of comments directed at me. I was accused of insulting this family member. My Christian faith was questioned. I was told to “SHUT THE HELL UP!” All of this came from people I don’t know but who are part of my family member’s social network. As the thread of comments grew, I defended myself. Finally, though, I stopped, and I unfriended my family member. I wanted no part of this network of people.

If you insert yourself into controversial conversations on Facebook, people are going to attack you, probably with more vitriol than they would if you were in the same room. Everybody knows that. Something else has occurred to me as I’ve thought about this incident, though, and that is the notion of pizza. Facebook conversations are less like democratic exchanges of ideas and more like pizza parties.

When we share something on Facebook, whether we compose it ourselves or post it from another source, we’re offering a hot steamy pizza to our social network. Some of our friends will gobble it up, liking it and commenting, “Amen!” and “Thanks for sharing.” Others, though, won’t like it. And their comments effectively throw tofu on the pizza. And nobody likes tofu. Especially on pizza.

It’s as if I showed up to my family member’s pizza party, looked at what she was offering to her social network, and announced, “How can you eat that?!” and then tried to correct its flaws by adding healthier ingredients to it. That was a very unwelcome move to the vast majority of the network. It rendered people unable to assess the nutritional merit of the tofu I’d sprinkled on top of the pepperoni because they were so angry it was even there. I’d ruined their pizza.

I’m friends with my family member again. Only now, when she serves up one her contentious pizzas, I politely decline and move on. Her social network likes pizza that I think is unhealthy. My social network’s pizza tastes are different, and she wonders about them, “How can you eat that?!” But, for my part, I’m done trying to improve other peoples’ pizzas.

Twitter Makes The Church Better

This is a descriptive post about the San Gabriel Presbytery vote on Amendment 10-A this past Tuesday, May 10th, a deliberation that was preceded by a matter of mere minutes by the tweeted (and infinitely re-tweeted) announcement of the decisive 10-A vote result from the the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area.

Before out meeting began, I was unofficially charged by the Executive Presbyter to watch for a Twin Cities result, so I spent most of the afternoon checking the #pcusa and #ptca Twitter tags. I celebrated with @mayog that @charlesawiley was with us, addressing our debate and leading our worship. and I broadcast his pearls of wisdom. I trumpeted @revsap’s floor speech to the world. I offered a lighthearted commentary–“scruple is a verb”–and I received in my Twitter flesh the punishment for my sin from @adamwc: “screw scrupling now.”

I wasn’t alone. People all over the room were shamelessly checking their phones. @heysonnie, @trindlea, and @ga_junkie collected and redistributed every update with stunning proficiency.

While moderating the CPM report, my phone buzzed in my pocket. Taking a calculated risk on my perception of the room’s distraction, I checked it: a tweet from @trindlea in which I’d been mentioned. As in, “@yorocko moderating . . .” I chuckled and scanned the room. @trindlea was hiding in plain sight.

We had the result before our debate began, and although we were prepared to respond if someone should announce the result from the floor during debate, nobody did. We debated for about 45 minutes along all the usual lines of argument, then we used pale green paper slips to vote.

During the dinner break, I used Face Time to call up some of our church’s elders who was unable to attend the meeting. The other commissioners from our church passed the iPad around and updated them about the proceedings.

Also during the dinner break, my colleague had a small audience around her phone, watching a video just posted by the Moderator of the General Assembly about 10-A’s passage.

At the close of worship, we read from an iPad the story from the denomination’s website confirming the success of the amendment before the benediction.

Media connected the church gathered.

Media connected the church separated.

I can unambiguously say that these tools made this exercise better than it would have been otherwise and better than it has been in the past.

My experience yesterday afternoon was a demonstration of the vitality and connection that social media technology can engender in the church. In the face of the doomsday scenarios being advanced already, that experience makes me hopeful and gives me something to point to and say, “Look how we love each other.”

My Church Killed Twitter? Personal vs. Institutional Use of Social Media

Is it better for pastors and churches to use social media institutionally or personally?

I set up a Facebook organization page for the youth ministry at my church several months ago, and it has attracted all of eight followers, most of whom are parents. Most of the content the page features is pushed from a Posterous blog I created to autopost content not only to Facebook but also to a Twitter account and a Flickr photo stream, all of which are “official” church youth ministry offerings.

I’m confident nobody uses those.

By contrast, when I use my personal Facebook page or Twitter account to narrate something going on in the youth ministry or the larger church, conversation reliably ensues.

Personally, I’m interested in people: what they think, what they’re doing, what they want to know. I’m much less interested in organizations. Yet pastors and youth leaders have well-advised instincts to make the things they’re involved in about the organization, the larger collective, and not about themselves. This is standard ministerial competence.

Social media are exposing that, at bottom, things that churches are doing are being done by people, and you can put those people on social map. And that’s okay. In fact, it may be a misuse of social media tools to employ them in the service of organizations instead of actual people.

One of the things from last year’s Theology After Google event that has stuck with me is Monica Coleman’s description of how she came to attend her present church. A friend connected her to the pastor through Facebook, and it was her interest in his theology and vision for the church that drew her to participate in the congregation. It was a person (it could just as easily been an elder or another member), not the organization.

So is it okay to scrap the “official” church Facebook page and instead cultivate the church’s relationship with the world through the personal social media presence of its leaders and members?