In the middle of all the stuff I am supposed to be doing this week, I have just spent a scary amount of time trying to work out how to twitter! Not a new form of worship song (though....) but the current social networking website of choice. I was prompted to investigate it when a friend of a generation above mine (originally a friend of my father!) contacted me to say he would like to "follow" me on Twitter. It is a means of keeping up to date which uses a web-page. Those who "twitter" put up a sentence describing "what you are doing now". And those who are interested "follow" - they are kept up to date by being able to read what is posted.
I think I've got it working - though whether I will ever have anything interesting to put on it remains to be seen. and now I am trying to work out if this has been a great waste of time, if this is just one more example of the current conviction that the whole world centres on me, and so everybody needs to know everything about me - or at least, everything I choose to tell them - or whether I can find any way of thknking about this Christianly.
I start from the position that relaitonships are good, indeed, are fundamental. We are not called to be individual believers, but to be the community of the people of God. And practices that support relationships, indeed, enable relationships, are to be valued.
But is this about relationships? It is interesting to know what my friends are doing, but is it relationship? Or might it become an excuse not to phone, meet, have face to face conversations.
I suppose it might. But I have also found that the other site I am part of, Facebook, has actually sustained relationship with those who have moved away, renewed relationship with those from whom I had become estranged, and enabled a development of relationship with some whom I knew only slightly. There is a Bloomsbury Facebook page - keeping people whop are at a distance in touch with what is going on. We are thinking we might develop Twitter in the same way.
Of course it can be self-centred and isolationist. Of course it can be a nonsense, or even worse (I've already had to block several "followers" whose invitations were definitely not the sort I want to take up!) But face to face relationships are not automatically and by virtue of being face to face good, life giving and healthy. Relationships,at the heart of our calling, are also at the heart of our struggle to be disciples. We don't relate well automatically - not face to face or on the screen. We need to learn the patterns and practices that will make it work. We need to take the risks, trust and explore, learn to forgive and be forgiven.
Maybe the skills I am needing to learn to use Facebook and to tweet (which I think is the verb - though I could be wrong; please tell me if I am) will serve to remind me that I am always needing to pay attention to the connections I have with people, and whether they are working, or whether I am - as this blog has just told me - performing an illegal action.
I believe that this is what church is about. It is not the church's role to change the world. It is the church's role to form people who will change the world, live out the Kingdom. When we are together - physically, over the phone or email, on networking sites or through a blog, we are experimenting and discovering what it is to be the people God has made us. And then we live that out in ways that change the world we live in.
And now, I am off to have a cup of hot chocolate and catch up with a friend, face to face.