Communication in church travels along many paths, not all of which can be controlled by the church itself, one of the newest aspects to this is updating a status on facebook, if say 50% of the church are on facebook, then news will travel at a broadband pace. This is good, as news can travel fast when needed such as: ‘bring a plate to church Sunday for the monthly lunch’ – a notice or more personal: ‘please pray for a sick member of the church, just been to see her, asks for prayer.’ This is good and beneficial. It can also be negative as everyone wants to feel included in the church and its life, so hearing of news second hand or after everyone else can lead to feelings of being undervalued, there could also be unclear communication and a Chinese whispers affect. However, leaders can embrace and shape this virtual grapevine by having good communication strategies in place and have limits on what information can be shared by staff on line via facebook and other such tools like twitter. In doing this, a congregation can communicate 24/7 and increase church community the other 6 days of the week.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Virtual Grapevine
Communication in church travels along many paths, not all of which can be controlled by the church itself, one of the newest aspects to this is updating a status on facebook, if say 50% of the church are on facebook, then news will travel at a broadband pace. This is good, as news can travel fast when needed such as: ‘bring a plate to church Sunday for the monthly lunch’ – a notice or more personal: ‘please pray for a sick member of the church, just been to see her, asks for prayer.’ This is good and beneficial. It can also be negative as everyone wants to feel included in the church and its life, so hearing of news second hand or after everyone else can lead to feelings of being undervalued, there could also be unclear communication and a Chinese whispers affect. However, leaders can embrace and shape this virtual grapevine by having good communication strategies in place and have limits on what information can be shared by staff on line via facebook and other such tools like twitter. In doing this, a congregation can communicate 24/7 and increase church community the other 6 days of the week.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The scriptures give the impression that gossip is bad. What do you consider to be the real if any difference between the grapevine and gossip or rumor? Are you so sure that the grapevine will not spin out of control and spread information that may assassinate the characters of other people. What is the relationship between the grapevine and the law of love? Just to ask but I agree with your observations.
ReplyDeleteThat is a paper thin line, gossip v news, how would you draw the line, biblically speaking?
ReplyDeleteGrapevines spin out all the time, esp. virtual ones, which is what I was alluding too :) I guess we can justify the grapevine by love can't we, that doesn't make it right, but its what most people do, I include myself in that at times!