The Christian Year and Social Media

I do love the way that the Christian Year is becoming more important to Christians because of social media.

When I check my facebook and twitter feeds in a morning I can be pretty sure that there will be something there which relates to what season or more likely what day we have got to in the cycle of faith.

Today for example, I checked my facebook feed and found a lovely description of St Margaret of Scotland posted by Kirstin Freeman.

Today is St Margaret’s Feast Day and I can remember a time when most people simply wouldn’t participate in such a festival. Now, if you follow a few Christian bloggers and social media mavens you get little reminders of the heros of faith – comment and pictures and all kinds of good things just arriving before your eyes.

Passive learning is a big feature of the new knowledge economy. I find it odd that lots of people in the church still don’t get it and still think that learning is about people coming to hear them spout. It can be far more dynamic and far more interesting, even if spouting is still part of what the church has to offer.

Comments

  1. I certainly agree with passive learning… I have called it ‘knowledge Grazing’ in a book I’m working on at the moment…. There’s a bit about this here… http://www.agent4change.net/grapevine/platform/2050-hungry-for-learning-knowledge-grazing-fits-the-bill.html

    And for the church, well, maybe the passive learning paradigm is good. You already post the vid of the sermon for folks to watch again and digest – the number of questions people ask you or points they raise with you about the sermon after watching it again would perhaps be an indication as to how much passive church-type learning is taking place?

  2. Margaret of the Sea of Galilee says

    More especially the internet provides access to the 0.001% (probably less) of the population whose lives – like one’s own – revolve around these things. And exactly which stole who wore last Sunday to reduce everything to such an absurdity which of course is a Christian/liturgical idiosyncracy in itself. “It just encourages them!” as my mother would have said…

  3. I’m not sure what you mean, Margaret.

    But you sound sniffy.

    • Margaret of the Sea of Galilee says

      That you can find people interested in your own Very Specific Areas of Interest…a good thing but of course encourages you in your idiosyncracies which is less good

      • Ah. I see why I didn’t understand at first Margaret. What I was suggesting was precisely the opposite of what you are saying. I think I learn about all kinds of things (spiritual and otherwise) that I never expected to learn through following interesting people online who have quite different interests to my own.

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