What is in Kelvin's Head?

Social Media and Ministry – Will I be your friend?

05/08/2014

Here’s where I’m at with social media.

Twitter

You’ll find me here: www.twitter.com/thurible

I follow whoever I like and I let anyone who wants to follow me. Twitter is the wild west – you do what you like. Part of the fun is following people who wouldn’t dream of following you back.

There are just over 500 accounts that I follow. These show up in my timeline and I keep a reasonable watch on what is going on. I miss some things in my timeline but I check twitter every day. Indeed, for some parts of my day, twitter is open in another monitor on my desk. Some of the people I follow are people who are close to me but most are not. I follow some people because they telegraph news that I’m interested in far quicker than any other media. I know things far sooner by following twitter than I would otherwise. Because I use it in this way, it is my responsibility to learn to sift and sort out what is likely to be true and what can be discarded as speculation or downright lies. As in other forms of communication, reputation is principally what determines whether I trust someone and I have huge responsibilities in working all this out. I need to be familiar with the genre to understand what I am reading.

[An example of that has just happened whilst I’m writing this post – a journalist I trust has just tweeted that Baroness Warsi has resigned over Gaza. I’m interested in that and I’m seeing that some time before I will hear it on the news.]

People ask me whether this takes a lot of time. My answer is that it takes hardly any time. And it takes all my time. It is just going on. It is part of life.

I tweet @thurible and I tweet on behalf of St Mary’s @thecathedral. The latter account doesn’t have my personality, but reflects the institution. The former account does reflect my personality. That means you get to hear what I think about God and what I think about Kylie’s head-dress. I also retweet things from people I find interesting and people I generally trust. You might hear things from me that you won’t hear in the newspapers and some people follow me for that reason. Some people presumably follow me because what I say entertains them in some way. But it is a free for all – those who want to follow get to do so without me bothering much about who they are. Three times as many people follow me as the number of people I follow.

If my tweets are retweeted by others, and they often are, then they will reach tens of thousands of people. What I think or say about the Scottish Episcopal Church, Kylie’s head-dress or Baroness Warsi could reach very many people. This is so powerful I have to think about what I say. Believe me, I do.

If I know you, or if you interact with me in ways that are clever, funny, witty, amusing, intelligent or even belligerent, there is a reasonable chance that I’ll follow you.

Facebook

Well, facebook used to be the social network to build up vast lists of friends. I’m not interested in that any more. Since twitter came along, I’ve no particular interest in adding people as friends unless I’ve got good reason to do so. I get quite a few friend requests from people I don’t know at all and I realised a few months ago that I just wasn’t interested.

You see, if I accept you as a friend, I’ll see what you have to say in my timeline. Experience suggests that those whom I don’t know will be reposting lots of things from other people that I think of as drivel.

I’m interested in you on facebook if I know you or if I’m interested in what you’ve got to say. I am far less interested in your kitten picture. However, if I know your kittens, I’m beguiled. I’m much more interested in what you have to say or in in the picture that you have taken than in things that you have reposted from other “clever” people.

A while ago, Facebook introduced the concept of following. This is more sophisticated than twitter. You can follow me without me having to be your friend and a bunch of people do that. It means you can see all my public postings but I don’t have to see the photograph of your kitten. Everyone wins.

I work fairly carefully to keep my facebook connections in good order. I use the “lists” facility to make sure I know who is receiving what I’m posting. Thus, I can continue to use Facebook when I’m on holiday but don’t let members of the congregation see my postings whilst I’m away because a holiday is a holiday and we need time off from one another. It isn’t difficult to do that with Facebook. Most people who complain about facebook haven’t bothered to learn how to use it.

[I’m starting to see comment from politicians, journalists and friends about Baroness Warsi’s resignation – some see it as principled, some see it as opportunist – I sit and think about it.]

I’m more than aware that “friends” are not friends. However, I think that it is silly for people to say that “friends” have nothing to do with real friendship and community. (As the Church of Scotland Moderator appeared to do at the end of the General Assembly). I get lots of my community online. I like living that way. Some of the people I am closest to relate to me in this way. I have known them for many years and enjoy the daily company of good friends whom I would have lost touch with years ago without this way of communicating. I’ll be praying this morning at Morning Prayer for someone whom I’ve known since 1989 whom I see from Facebook is waiting news from a significant MRI scan. Don’t tell me that’s not real.

I’m on facebook at www.facebook.com/thurible – if you are someone I know, are in my congregation, are someone I’ve met in my ministry then yes, I am likely to add you as a friend if you request that. I don’t generally befriend people in the congregation who are under 16. I don’t generally befriend people whom I don’t know at all. I get regular requests from people who have a number of mutual friends in common. I’m afriad if I see that our only mutual friends are a few of the dozen or so LGBT activists that I know well then you probably need to follow me rather than expect me to befriend you.

[BBC have a Breaking News note on their website saying that Baroness Warsi has resigned – nothing else].

Google+

I’m only on Google+ because it gets you access to google’s video hangouts and we host online evening prayer there. I only know one person who regularly posts on Google+ and they post their photographs elsewhere too. I don’t monitor Google+ and I’m unlikely to add you to my account. Not because I don’t want to be your friend but because there is no-one there. You are not there asking me to be your friend anyway. Presumably google will one day pull the plug on some of this – they can’t be making money out of it.

Pinterest

Oh, I do love pinterest and I’m on that sporadically. (You’ll find my profile here: http://www.pinterest.com/kelvinthurible)
It allows you to build up collections of pics that are on the web.If you want to see my collection of Religious Hat pictures you need to find me there. If you want to gaze in wonder at my board of Baldacchinos, ombrellinos, and religious shades then there’s nowhere else to go. And as for my carefully curated moodboard of TISECesque worship – then if you’ve not seen it you don’t know what you are missing. No friends here – if I pin something on a public board you are welcome to pin it to yours. We’ll hope that pinterest have plenty of well paid lawyers to sort out the copyright issues. And we’ll enjoy it whilst it lasts – again I don’t see how they are making any money. This is the social media network of choice if I’m off sick.

Interestingly, Pinterest is a social network with significantly more women on it than men. I keep an eye on some of the “Dream Wedding” stuff for fear of what is coming my way.

Flickr

Flickr is a social network I have a profile on but hardly ever post to. I’m much more likely to post pictures to facebook. However I do use Flickr for finding pictures which people have already given their permission to be copied. I use these on the cathedral website sometimes. For example, when Peter Tatchell was with us recently I needed a good pic of him and found one on Flickr that had the appropriate copyright permissions allowing me to use it so long as I acknowledged where it had come from. Such generosity is a blessing unto us all.

LinkedIn

I always think I ought to love LinkedIn more than I do. I have a profile but don’t know what to do with it. Maybe it just doesn’t work for the church.

Others

I don’t have an instagram account but I might do one day. I don’t have any accounts on scruff, grindr, blendr or anything else which attempts to find me something carnal 300 ft from where I am. I also don’t think regular online dating can work for me but that is perhaps a post for another day. I don’t do social bookmarking though I can see the point. I don’t run any micro social networks of my own though from time to time I explore the options for the congregation. I use email so much that I’ve forgotten that it is a social media network though I’m quite sure that it is. I used to have a profile on Friends Reunited and presume it is still there but have to admit that Facebook beat it hands down. I have a spotify profile and think that it is very clever to try to make music into social media but resist most of their attempts to do so.

[The BBC now have a full report on Baroness Warsi’s resignation – pictures and responses from other people. I look at it and feel I’ve seen it all before. No-0ne links to it.]

Conclusion

Social Media and Ministry mix rather well. I don’t know what I’d do without some of it. It undoubtedly drives people to my blog and to the church website and both of those push some people towards the church. (They will push some people away too, but that’s OK – why waste the time of those who won’t be interested). Personality and ethos are gloriously muddled online. That’s the way the world is and I like it.

So that’s what I’m using social media for.

You?

Facebook, friends, pinterest, social media, twitter

19 responses to “Preferring me dead”

chris

27/11/2010

Well said, Rosemary. As for this business of everyone’s having to remain quiet and reasonable while unspeakable things are spoken … I’m sorry. I have this whined at me more times than I can count, so that my own calm goes out the window and I want to rage, rage, and the advocates of calm sit in their dispassionate heaven and think all will be well if people just shut up for another generation. It’s an affront to any society that this discrimination is still allowed to be seen as anything other than monstrous, and we need to raise a storm of protest that will make this obvious to even the most chilly political mind.

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Rosemary Hannah

27/11/2010

For the comfort of Kelvin, however, let me add this. The people who promote discrimination against queer folk very frequently neither want them dead not yet unborn. What they actually (though mistakenly) believe, is that gay people would be just the same if they were straight. That the person would be just the same, because who you desire is some kind of bolt-on accessory which you can pick from the shelf and have or not have, like adding an MP3 player to your car, or just having a tape deck. Now I know that is a terrible misunderstanding, but it is not actually quite as terrible as wishing that the essence of people was somehow different.

FWIW I do remember teaching a session on this to students, having asked them to imagine what people 100 years from now would think of our attitudes, and having one student tell me that in 50 years all gay people would be ‘cured’, and my suppressing my fury then and trying to explain why I did not want my friends and relatives ‘cured’ – and all the emotion catching up with me in my room at midnight, resulting in tears and all-but lying on the floor banging my heels and screaming. I suppose it was less actionable than banging a student’s head off the wall…..

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Scottish Roundup

28/11/2010

[…] debates at the recent meeting of the Church of England’s General Synod under the stark title, Preferring me dead. More jauntily, the damsel of the dancing scones writes about blogging’s transformative […]

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Elizabeth

02/12/2010

I wanted to post on this when I first read it (via Google Reader) but for some reason the internets wouldn’t let me on the site.

It’s hard to read this difficult words, but I think it’s very important that they’re said. I have only the smallest glimmerings of imagining how difficult it must be to be be a gay or lesbian priest now and fear that all too often I am prone to ignore the wider actions of the Anglican Communion because I’ve found it too painful and aggravating. But ignoring it is my privilege and no good in the long run.
And on this issue, as on others, I find it unhelpful to advocate a quite and slow approach. Movement is not always uni-directional and I agree with Kelvin that we seem to be moving backwards, at least, as far as the SEC College of Bishops and the Anglican Communion leadership is concerned. The softly, softly approach is not justice and is not by any stretch of the imagination the only means by which justice is reached. On this issue, as on others, the question is, if not now, when?

And I really, really dislike gay and lesbian Anglicans being sacrificed on the altar of loyalty to the ++Rowan. This is what happened in The Episcopal Church across the pond in 2006 and thank God General Convention saw fit to reverse the decision in 2009. Loyalty tests of such kind are horrendous!

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Rosemary Hannah

03/12/2010

And bluntly the only loyalty worth giving is loyalty to Truth and God.

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Revd Ross Kennedy

04/12/2010

I didn’t listen or read about anything voted on at the recent C of E Synod so can’t comment.

But frrankly I’m bored with all the obsession with sexuality – I just wish we could obey our Lord’s command to love one another.
But let me say this to lFr Kelvin, I for one certainly don’t want you dead. Life would be so dull without you – I would miss your blog and your excellent sermons ( which I must confess I sometimes plagiarise – bless me Father for I have sinned….) Don’t agree with much of what you say on sexual ethics but accept without question your devotion to our Lord and your ministry at St Mary’s.

Prejudice and intolerance certainly smother any real opportunity for real debate. However, I have experienced this as much from those on the theological left (including correspondents to this site) as well as those on the theological right.

The fact is that we are just as likely to find prejudice among liberals as well as conservatives in the church. I remember Bishop Richard Holloway discussing the ordination of women on the Television in the 1990s and making the insulting claim that most of the men opposed were probably homosexuals.

I’ve also heard many liberals express a definite wish for all those who dare to oppose the consecration of women to the Episcopacy to get out of the Church… or maybe even to drop dead.

The fact is that lots of people experience prejudice for a variety of reasons – a friend of mine who trained as a male nurse in the 1960s experienced a great deal of prejudice from his female superiors and as a result an absolute block to any promotion.

Others are discriminated against because they are too short or too tall or too fat , or not intelligent enough or didn’t attend the right university and even for daring to choose to be a ‘closet gay’!

There is a whole suffering world out there to which we are called upon to bring hope and help in the name of Jesus. So let’s stop focusing on our own personal problems and obsessions and get on with preaching the Good News.

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ryan

04/12/2010

>>>The fact is that we are just as likely to find prejudice among liberals as well as conservatives in the church. I remember Bishop Richard Holloway discussing the ordination of women on the Television in the 1990s and making the insulting claim that most of the men opposed were probably homosexuals.

If +Richard was talking about Forward in Lace types then he might have had a point ;-).

More seriously: can you cite any ‘liberal’ church that is suggesting denying the sacraments to conservatives? Or pining for an age when violence and discrimination against evangelicals was accepted as a good? These days, people have less tolerance for ‘I’m not racist,but…’ or ‘I don’t *hate* Jews, but….” or “the sexes are equal, but” rhetoric but anti-gay discrimination on religious grounds often goes unchallenged. So while it is of course important to challenge all forms of prejudice, there are no major ‘Christian’ Institute type lobbies endeavouring to defend and legitimise persecution of the fat, tall,or short.

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David McCarthy

06/12/2010

Oh, I know that in the secret halls of the likes of Facebook, there are many who feel free to exhibit prejudice against churches and individuals who don’t fit the bill. That reveals what is truly in the hearts of people. I’d hope that no-one would permit such diatribe and speak out against it, just as I have done to those on ‘the right’ who speak and behave badly.

As for you, dear Kelvin, there are many who disagree with you, but in our wee bit of the Church, I seriously doubt if there is anyone who would “prefer you dead”. You are a gifted minister – we’d miss you!

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