Today and tomorrow I will be participating in the Association of United Church Educators’ National Event. This year’s event is titled, “A New Turn: Hybrid Faith Formation.” Over the years, I have participated in several AUCE national events, but this is the first one that does not involve travel for me. Hybrid Faith Formation isn’t just the title of the event, it is also the style of the event. The two-day virtual conference is taking place over the Zoom platform. However, the AUCE Board has taken the platform a step farther than the typical user, by hiring a professional event company to manage the details of Internet Connection. I have already been through a tech check with a professional from the company and I have the secure web site to enter the “green room” in preparation for presenting during the first workshop. I have a different web connection for the parts of the event where I am not presenting, but participating as a member of the organization.

There will be six workshops, a virtual worship service, opportunities for connecting informally with colleagues, and opportunities for self care during the event. Like other AUCE events, I am looking forward to seeing old friends and making new friends who are engaged in faith formation ministries of the church.

I am not, however, looking forward to spending two days in front of the computer. I enter the green room for the first workshop at 8 am this morning local time. The last workshop of the day concludes at 6:30 p.m. After that, I have a 30 minute break before going back online to facilitate a virtual Adult Forum within our local church. We are already offering faith formation for members of our congregation in a virtual format. That’s 13 hours of screen time for me, somewhere in the neighborhood of a week’s worth of time in front of the computer in one day. Then I will get up tomorrow and do it again.

In the days of in-person gatherings, my schedule was disrupted far more deeply by these events. A national event would involve at least two days of travel time for me. I probably would have piggy backed at least one day’s worth of additional meetings to take advantage of the gathering, so a two day event would consume an entire week of my time. With luck, I would be able to do it without missing a Sunday worship service in my local congregation, but there were plenty of times when I would be traveling on Sundays in order to make the schedule work and to take advantage of the lowest airfare rates possible.

Virtual events and distance learning are a permanent part of faith formation ministries. When I first served on the national board of the Association of United Church Educators, I was brought to the board because I had some web development and management skills. I helped the organization produce its first web site and managed that site for several years before passing that task on to another person. These days, the technology is more sophisticated. The web site manager no longer has to know how to write code, and the web site has beautiful graphics and offers a great deal more content. In preparation for today’s sessions, my home office has been transformed into a mini television studio with a special microphone for enhanced sound quality and special lighting. Green screen technology will enable me to appear before a virtual background keyed to the theme of the event. All of that technology is more reliable and, for the most part, less expensive than it was back in the early days of web development for the organization.

The meetings of the AUCE Board now take place over the Internet. I have participated in meetings from my office at the church and from my home. I would be able to participate in a meeting while traveling as long as I had access to the Internet, which I do most of the time by using cellular technology and other Internet hot spots such as libraries. In the fall and next winter I will be teaching classes for the Faith Formation Leadership Training Program, a certificate program for faith formation leaders. I will have students from the east coast to California in my class, and I’ll lead it from my home. Like the AUCE National event, it primarily involves participants in four time zones, with the possibility of participants in any time zone on the planet. When I sign on at 8 am here, it will be 11 am on the East Coast. And when I finish the AUCE sessions at 6:30 pm, it will be 9:30 back east. Just fitting the schedule into the hours of the day is a challenge. The classes I will be teaching later will require me to sign on at 5:30 am. On the other hand they will conclude by 9 am, so I have the rest of the day free for other activities.

All of this would be very unfamiliar for the mentors and teachers who influenced my seminary training in Christian Education. The tools and techniques I learned were all based on in-person face-to-face models of education. Adapting to the world of virtual events is a big challenge for me. But it won’t be for our grandchildren. They have grown up in an Internet-connected world. They have participated in Zoom public school classes during the pandemic. They are at home with the world of log-ins and passwords and virtual backgrounds.

The core of faith formation, however, will always be about human relationships. Part of what motivates and enables me to participate in the virtual conference today is that I look forward to connecting with colleagues with whom I have decades of shared ministry. Today I’ll be introducing a teacher who I met while working on a curriculum development project a couple of decades ago. Another person I will introduce was a colleague in educational consulting for congregations among other professional connections. These are real people about whom I really care. We will meet in a virtual space, but the meeting will be very real.

This may be a taste of the future. That is yet to be seen. It will certainly be an adventure. And I have long been up for adventures.