The Big Disconnect of Online Connection: It's Not As Easy As It Sounds

We're really not even that far into it, and I'm already so done with everyone saying that "we can all still stay connected" through social media.  Or that "we can still be the church" with an emphasis on 'live stream' services or 'group chat' small groups or 'on line meetings'.

No.  We can't.  Not all of us can.

I'm 62 years old and have obviously navigated my way through enough technology to be able to establish a blog and link it to my Facebook page.  I have email and texting and do messaging and even video chats through Facebook.  I have Skype on my computer and have used it to help complete long distance learning from the other side of the world.  So I'm not a techno-idiot.  Not completely.

But in these days when we can't be together and everyone's singing the praises of their particular online platform, I will come right out and admit it.

I'm feeling overwhelmed, stupid and left behind.

Earlier this week an online meeting was set up for a leadership team I belong to.  The email was sent out the day before with the 'easy' link I just needed to 'click' on and I'd be part of the meeting.  But when I went to sign in it asked me to download Chrome or Firefox, both of which I know I already have on my computer, and, well, that's all it took.  I do not want to wrangle through a tangle of internet technobabble, be forced to make a decision about whether or not I 'accept' something I don't understand, click on this, unmute that, find all the icons, all the while knowing that other team members are patiently wasting their precious time waiting for me to figure it out.  I bowed out of the meeting.

On a good day I would press forward with something like this.  But right now, with the entire world all trying to figure out a new way of being human at the very same time, when I can't go to worship and physically be with my community, when precious people I love who are not in Canada are facing the same threat but in a far more precarious situation, when because of all this (and oh so many more layers of disorientation I could list) I have myself and others to stabilize and reassure, I have no emotional band width for working my way through the technology.

Not now.

It makes me wonder if COVID-19 is taking out my peer group in more ways than one.

Two things in particular have encouraged me this week.

One is an email I received today from my church introducing a brand new Ministry Team at Highview called "Tech Help Team".  "If you are looking for a friend to talk through your simple tech-related woes, we have complied a list of Highview regulars who might be able to help."

Now there's some innovative, people-sensitive leadership!  Thank you!  I'll still have to work my way through my aversion to anything that requires the math part of my brain that died in grade four (an ego issue I'll just keep on working through my whole life, apparently), but at least it's acknowledged that this stuff is hard for some of us.  For enough of us that a whole Team has been put together just to help us stay together.  Thank you Highview!!!!

The second thing that encouraged me was a blog written by Small-Church hero Karl Vaters, entitled
So Your Small Church Live-Stream Stinks - Here's Why That's Okay  (see what I did there?  I even added a link, provided it actually works I guess).  Well worth the read.  He reminds us, as he so often does, that real ministry is about the people, no matter how those people are staying 'connected'.   These days, I am feeling that more than usual.

I do realize the irony of the fact that I am expressing this thinly disguised rant by use of a particular online format, and that there are many within my circle of life that do not spin in this orbit.  That's why I've been on the phone so much in the past seven days.  Voice to voice on the phone.

Because I'm concerned, actually, that somewhere in this 'new way of doing church' (and considering this isn't going to be just a blip of a few Sundays) the Church might inadvertently block out some important sage-wisdom badly needed in this time when literally every single person in charge of any group of people whatsoever on the entire planet hasn't ever lead through anything like this.  Collectively, we have no idea what we're doing, including being the Church.  But collectively, I think we have a fighting chance.  More than that.  We can prevail and reinvent and be something different and beautiful and strong.  But for that to happen,  I think we really do need all hands on deck.  

And I'm willing to put my hands and shoulders and my whole stinkin' heart to that task.
Because, beloved Church, I love you more than you can possibly know.

Just....bear with me a moment until I figure out where I'm supposed to click.