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conference proposal: Missions in Digital Culture: A Transforming Shift

Missions in Digital Culture: A Transforming Shift
by Rev Dr Steve Taylor, AngelWings Ltd, Flinders University

IAMS 2022 conference paper proposal

The digital is a rapidly morphing field. Technology impacts our work and homes and changes health care, leisure, and religious practice. Digital missiology examines how mission intersects with the internet, digital culture, and other forms of digital technology. The IAMS conference themes – of power, inequalities, vulnerabilities – provide a valuable hermeneutical frame to overview the current state of research, assess the contributions, and consider future directions for research in digital missiology.

This paper aims to discern how digitalization is changing the methods and conditions of mission. Particular attention is given to empirical research and ethnographic studies of digital resourcing, including trans-national studies of ecclesial innovation in Aotearoa New Zealand, and the United States. These experiments in digital missions will be analysed missiologically. If, as Marshall McLuhan claims, the medium is the message, then how is the vulnerable Christ present as an animating presence in these digital experiences and networks? The analysis will include dialogue with two recent reappraisals of McLuhan by Douglas Coupland (2011)) and Nick Ripatrazone (2022), as part of a reappraisal of embodiment and participation, informing theologies by which mission might be understood as being re-contextualised for an emerging digital world

This work is part of a larger project seeking to re-theorise Bosch’s notion of paradigm shifts. While Bosch focused on paradigms, the argument is that transforming generativities occur in shifts rather than paradigms. Hence digital cultures offer significant resources for indwelling and embodying missio Dei as transforming shifts in mission.

a year today at AngelWings Ltd

A year ago today, I began at AngelWings Ltd in a more full-time way. AngelWings Ltd was a company Lynne Taylor and I formally established in 2002 to share demographic resources, research services, and writing across the church.

Through 2020, as we together reflected on the impact of Covid on the church, we sensed a hunger for resourcing and research. We observed how the enforced online environment drew on skills that I had been honing for many years. We also recognised that the continuous reviews at KCML – begun in 2018, still ongoing – were consuming creative time and emotion, while the “no new initiatives” frameworks made innovation from within KCML and the PCANZ very difficult. So we made the decision to take a leap and use the platform of AngelWings Ltd to offer experience, skill and passion more widely across the diversity of the church.

It’s been an exciting year.

As a snapshot, in the last week, my work included Advent online resourcing, preaching on mission in a local church, working on two different research projects for two denominations, individual minister supervision, preparing to export Learn Local overseas, agreeing to provide theological course design for an Australian denomination offering complex change resourcing, co-workshopping a column for a US magazine, and examining a PhD. Plus some probono input into the local missional community I’m part of, along with progressing a number of academic research projects on innovation and mission.

Over the week, the snapshot involved serving 10 different organisations in 4 countries among folk from at least 5 distinct denominations. It was an exciting week in what has been an exciting year.

Thankful for the year gone, excited about the year ahead.

Learn Local in Community Mission

Back in October, as part of AngelWings Ltd and with the generosity of the Synod of Otago Southland, I ran Learn Local as a mission learning opportunity. One of the participants, Lisa Wells, has written up some of her learnings, for her church newsletter and also for the Southern Presbytery newsletter.

For those who don’t get either newsletter, here with Lisa’s permission is her response to Learn Local. It includes her reflections on some of her visual attending (taking photographs) from the Learn Local experience ……….

Learn Local in Community Mission

Back in October, which seems so long ago now, I was one of the curious people who attended “Learn Local”, which is a new event, funded by the Synod of Otago and Southland, seeking to explore community mission through local story telling.

Led by Rev Dr Steve Taylor (former Principal of KCML and daring missiologist) and members of two local faith communities, the course involved a day spent in two communities and four weekly teaching and reflection on-line sessions.

It was a rainy South Dunedin day as we met with the people involved in “The Seedling”, a place-based mission experiment in South D, which is discovering different ways to be in community, be church and care for each other and the neighbourhood. The plan for the day was that course participants walked the streets of South D as Seedling members unrolled the story of how they came to be and how they discerned where God was already working and inviting them to join in. This approach is consistent with the idea of Missio Dei (God in the World). It is not about designing programmes and hoping people will come. In fact, it’s not about programmes at all. It is both contemplative and active. Walking, using all our senses, is not only a grounding thing to do, but it slows us down and helps us notice things we would usually hurry past.

Like most things related to community mission, plans had to be put aside and our physical walk became a virtual thing as we “walked” from one stage of the Seedling journey to another. And still it poured!

It cleared up after lunch and we were in North Dunedin, the University area specifically. We met at the café Student Soul uses for its weekly services. We heard how it had changed over the years and the amazing plans for the future, utilising Web 3 technology for teaching, discipling and pastoral care. We were invited to go out and listen and discover what Student Soul’s mission context was. These are some photos I took and how I wondered about them as a reflection of a student’s journey.

I’ll tell you more about the on-line teaching someday, but I want to jump to the end! Each of us committed to walking in our own neighbourhood (both a spiritual discipline and a means of discernment) and sharing our discovering with the group. As we did this the seed of an idea took root in my mind.
What if … others might be interested in this too?
What if … it wasn’t about walking, but wandering and wondering?
What if … we looked at the small signs of God’s work?

For me taking photos of details and patterns is a way to keep my mind on what’s in front of me.)
Then … what would our story be? Is this a story God is opening up?

So now my curiosity and desire to be a learner has led me to more questions. Who would be interested in “wandering and wondering”? Can taking photos be a way to share God’s presence and creation?

Finding God in all things is at the core of Ignatian Spirituality and is rooted in our growing awareness that God can found in everyone, in every place and in everything. When we learn to pay more attention to God, we become more thankful and reverent, and through this we become more devoted to God, more deeply in love with our Creator.

So, I’m wondering … are there others who would like to see where this might lead?

Lisa Wells
(with Lisa’s permission)

workplace whole of life resourcing with Advent Tiredly

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28

I recently initiated a new online offering. Called Advent Tiredly, I wanted to offer online spiritual resourcing during December for those feeling ragged as a tough year ends. It was an innovation as part of my role as Director of AngelWings Ltd.

In 30 minutes, Advent Tiredly offers space to breathe in, to pause (with Anna, Mary, Elizabeth and Wisdom) and to breathe out with a story of contemporary Advent innovation. I offered it on Zoom, with the invitation to bring a “light” of choice – it could be the light switch in your room, a desk lamp or a specially chosen candle.

Watching participants in the moments of silence, I realised that a number were connecting in from their workplaces. Their zoom backgrounds were not lounge room sofas or kitchen tables. Instead what was behind them were office noticeboards and workplace glass partitions. This meant Advent Tiredly was enabling me to read Scripture, the stories of Anna, Mary, Elizabeth and Women Wisdom, in peoples’ workplaces.

After the first week, one participant, Lynne Taylor, posted this photo on her facebook.

Notice the open work diary on the right, the computer keyboard front and centre, the monitor to the back. Advent Tiredly spiritual resourcing occurs within her everyday working world.

She wrote the following words on her facebook:

“Blessed by a moment to breathe. Advent tiredly … Leaving a reminder for tomorrow.”

As she enters her work the next day, spiritual resourcing will be remembered. Faith will greet her as she opens her office door.

This online resourcing stands in stark contrast to so much religious resourcing. As a church minister, I would normally read the story of Anna in a church building not in a persons’ workplace. If I was pastorally visiting during the week, I would most likely catch up with a Monday to Friday worker in a cafe. I’ve never read Scripture in their working office. Yet here, through online resourcing, I was holding sacred space for people amid their computers and filing cabinets and work place diary appointments. It was a wonderful reminder of the everyday and whole of life potential of online resourcing.

Advent Tiredly runs for the 4 weeks of December. Wednesday’s 1, 8, 15, 22 Dec, 30 mins from 4:45 -5:15 pm (New Zealand time). A $5 cost per session is suggested. To register click here.