Happily not keeping up
09/12/23 03:20
Being 70 certainly has its advantages. One of those advantages is that I have no need to deal with social media. That isn’t completely true, but for example when all of the craziness erupted over Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and rebranding it as X, I simply deleted my account and took the app off of my phone. I participate in FaceBook, but I’m not very active on that platform. Since I signed up, I have only accepted friend requests from people who are actually friends of mine. If I don’t know a person, I don’t respond to their friend request. I look at my FaceBook feed from time to time, but I rarely respond. And I am liberal in my use of the feature that allows me to “see less of this kind of post” in my feed. I still have a Linked-in Profile, but I haven’t updated it in a few years and it is interesting to me mostly when I read the various offers to apply for jobs that occasionally are posted on my feed. Frankly, I am not qualified to be an elementary school principal and I don’t think I’d be good at the job. No, I have no interest in starting an online undergraduate degree program at Walden University. I watch a fair amount of YouTube videos, but haven’t posted on my channel since I retired.
My ignorance of, minimal participation in, and frequent ignoring of social media are things that are not options for younger professionals. There are many careers that rise and fall on social media. Social media is key to staying in touch with constituents, raising funds, conducting meetings, and advertising. People with good social media skills are an asset to any organization.
Our church, as is common with many congregations, offers worshipers the option of participating in services over Zoom and over FaceBook. I don’t know the statistics on how many people participate that way, but when we led worship at a small church recently, about 1/5 of the participants were online. I’d be interested in knowing whether or not 1/5 of the income comes from online donors, but only out of a general sense of interest in how the church operates. I don’t need to monitor those details now that I am retired.
Our recent experience with our cell phones, about which I wrote yesterday, did, however, remind me of how much more dependent we are on digital communication than used to be the case. Over the span of my career, I felt that I was never very good at using the telephone. In most cases, I simply preferred face-to-face contact over talking on the phone. I didn’t particularly enjoy the many phone calls that are naturally a part of being a minister. I know that when we started our ministry in Rapid City the fact that I would leave the office and go visit people when a phone call would suffice was a minor irritation to our church secretary. In fact I reluctantly got a cell phone to address that concern. Admittedly once I got a cell phone, I increased its use each year until we reached our current level of dependence upon the devices.
I did, reluctantly, learn to pray with people over the phone. I learned of the importance of the skill the hard way. Once, when I was burned in an accident, a phone call and prayer from a colleague was terribly reassuring and pastoral and I remembered how I felt when I had the opportunity to reach out to others who were experiencing stress or health issues. I never felt as effective praying over the phone as I did in person, but I learned that there are times when less effective is better than not responding at all. I feel a similar way about online worship. Both as a worshiper and as a worship leader, I find online worship to be less meaningful than being in church in person. I did, however, promote the expansion of online worship in our congregation, spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic. And Susan and I have worshiped online when various things, including the pandemic, prevented us from attending in person.
One of the joys of our Interim position at First Congregational Church of Bellingham was that we were allowed to go to the church and be present in the sanctuary for worship even when the building was officially closed and online worship was the only way most members could participate. Leading the time with children online was a challenge for me and nowhere as fun or meaningful as having real children in front of me, but I learned to do it with a certain level of competence.
Now, however, it is a relief to not have to be in front of the cameras. I’m quite certain that I would not have been a good television personality, though I occasionally joke that I ended my career as a televangelist because of the pandemic.
One of the things I don’t understand about online church is how the finances work. In the congregation where we are members, the offering is practically left out of the service. There is no invitation to give, no doxology, no prayer of dedication. The plates are passed during the postlude at the conclusion of the service, but most participants don’t put anything into them. I suppose most people, like us, give through automatic withdrawals from our bank accounts. We review our pledge once a year and then pretty much forget about it. It seems to work. The lights are on and the employees receive their paychecks.
It is a relief to me that I don’t have to understand all of those details this day. Change will continue to occur at an alarming rate, but I don’t have to keep up. I don’t mind being called a dinosaur. It doesn’t bother me to have a 20-something clerk in a store tell me that my phone or computer is “old.” Even being called a dinosaur doesn’t bother me. I’m retired. I don’t have to be state of the art.
It surprises me how much stress that eliminates. I’m happy not needing to keep up any more.
My ignorance of, minimal participation in, and frequent ignoring of social media are things that are not options for younger professionals. There are many careers that rise and fall on social media. Social media is key to staying in touch with constituents, raising funds, conducting meetings, and advertising. People with good social media skills are an asset to any organization.
Our church, as is common with many congregations, offers worshipers the option of participating in services over Zoom and over FaceBook. I don’t know the statistics on how many people participate that way, but when we led worship at a small church recently, about 1/5 of the participants were online. I’d be interested in knowing whether or not 1/5 of the income comes from online donors, but only out of a general sense of interest in how the church operates. I don’t need to monitor those details now that I am retired.
Our recent experience with our cell phones, about which I wrote yesterday, did, however, remind me of how much more dependent we are on digital communication than used to be the case. Over the span of my career, I felt that I was never very good at using the telephone. In most cases, I simply preferred face-to-face contact over talking on the phone. I didn’t particularly enjoy the many phone calls that are naturally a part of being a minister. I know that when we started our ministry in Rapid City the fact that I would leave the office and go visit people when a phone call would suffice was a minor irritation to our church secretary. In fact I reluctantly got a cell phone to address that concern. Admittedly once I got a cell phone, I increased its use each year until we reached our current level of dependence upon the devices.
I did, reluctantly, learn to pray with people over the phone. I learned of the importance of the skill the hard way. Once, when I was burned in an accident, a phone call and prayer from a colleague was terribly reassuring and pastoral and I remembered how I felt when I had the opportunity to reach out to others who were experiencing stress or health issues. I never felt as effective praying over the phone as I did in person, but I learned that there are times when less effective is better than not responding at all. I feel a similar way about online worship. Both as a worshiper and as a worship leader, I find online worship to be less meaningful than being in church in person. I did, however, promote the expansion of online worship in our congregation, spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic. And Susan and I have worshiped online when various things, including the pandemic, prevented us from attending in person.
One of the joys of our Interim position at First Congregational Church of Bellingham was that we were allowed to go to the church and be present in the sanctuary for worship even when the building was officially closed and online worship was the only way most members could participate. Leading the time with children online was a challenge for me and nowhere as fun or meaningful as having real children in front of me, but I learned to do it with a certain level of competence.
Now, however, it is a relief to not have to be in front of the cameras. I’m quite certain that I would not have been a good television personality, though I occasionally joke that I ended my career as a televangelist because of the pandemic.
One of the things I don’t understand about online church is how the finances work. In the congregation where we are members, the offering is practically left out of the service. There is no invitation to give, no doxology, no prayer of dedication. The plates are passed during the postlude at the conclusion of the service, but most participants don’t put anything into them. I suppose most people, like us, give through automatic withdrawals from our bank accounts. We review our pledge once a year and then pretty much forget about it. It seems to work. The lights are on and the employees receive their paychecks.
It is a relief to me that I don’t have to understand all of those details this day. Change will continue to occur at an alarming rate, but I don’t have to keep up. I don’t mind being called a dinosaur. It doesn’t bother me to have a 20-something clerk in a store tell me that my phone or computer is “old.” Even being called a dinosaur doesn’t bother me. I’m retired. I don’t have to be state of the art.
It surprises me how much stress that eliminates. I’m happy not needing to keep up any more.
