(This is part of a series of blogs related to the Minns Lecture “The Age of Collaboration” that I co-presented with Peter Bowden.)

As people of faith and faithful promises – that is, people pledged to a covenant – there are many changes we can make. Some of the ideas I will name here arose from social media conversations. Some of them are mine; some originated from others who gave me permission to share them here; all of them are the work of collaboration.

Risk Innovating

Some of the work calling us forward involves re-equipping our faith communities. The Unitarian Universalist General Assembly has been engaged in some of that re-equipping work, just changing our bylaws to allow for non-local faith communities. Staff members like Carey McDonald in Youth and Young Adult Ministries are working to re-equip our faith communities to fulfill promises and empower people with fantastic gifts and callings. There are a lot of people, some inside congregations - the Reverend Ellen Cooper-Davis comes to mind — others working in partnership with communities, like my co-presenter, Peter Bowden and even others who are working away from outside. We need everyone for the work.

• In the age of easier connections and networks, congregations are only one kind of faith community.
• Small and niche faithful living can have real excellence that matters. Size is not a measure of faithful success: effect in the lives of people and the health of the planet is.
• We must share better information and tools with one another. Risking is easier when we are not shamed for doing so.
• As faithful communities, we can document and reward faithful failures.
• Collaboration is how really effective faithing happens.
• Celebrate faith communities risking together.

Curating

Curating is not only a spiritual discipline for our age, it is one of the easiest, and broadly participatory practices. As people of faith, we are already networks of curators; let us become even more attentive and intentional about what we are curating and how we share.

• Learn about the commons, care for it, and contribute to it regularly.
• Notice what is great and who is risking faithfully. Share that good news.
• Worship and faith development resources lend themselves easily to open-source curation and development.
• Utilize citizen journalism and citizen inspirational sharing in blogs, social media, and associational publications.
• Transform associational publications into inspiration engines.

Teaching & Learning

One of the realities of networks and new technologies is that they develop new applications, new wisdom, and new tools all the time. Learning, teaching, and creating go together in this exciting innovating age. Many faith development leaders are engaged in equipping our communities with and for this digital age. All of us need to be teaching and learning, though. As Unitarian Universalist consultant, congregational coach, and educator, Connie Goodbread is fond of saying: “faith development is all congregations do.”

• We must continue to create and share tools for comprehensive social media education, and integrate those into our faith development program for families and communities, along the lines of Our Whole Lives, the comprehensive sexuality education program developed by the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association.
• We could create an electronic pilgrimage, mapping an Abolitionist Trail, marking sites of faithful resistance to slavery.
• We can create more digital study spaces and help desks and offer free online courses teaching basic graphic design.

Re-equipping for innovation, teaching, learning, and curating are connected practices. We cannot attend to one particular area without engaging the others. Part of what we teach and learn as we risk faithfully for change is how to be brave, how to innovate, how to faith well, and how to curate (we notice what is good). When we curate, we notice who’s failing well, who’s learning, who’s teaching, and find resources in others’ stories of re-equipping and helpful practices.  What matters is to begin.

Many of these suggestions do not require major money. But they do need generosity and time and collaboration. Others of them are things we really need to put big resources into - they still need generosity and time and collaboration. We are in this together. We need one another to be faithful.

(This is part of a series of blogs related to the Minns Lecture “The Age of Collaboration” that I co-presented with Peter Bowden.)

As people of faith and faithful promises – that is, people pledged to a covenant – there are many changes we can make. Some of the ideas I will name here arose from social media conversations. Some of them are mine; some originated from others who gave me permission to share them here; all of them are the work of collaboration.

Financial considerations are a big one for a lot of us. Faithful risk is truly very different for each of us. Some of us are already in more vulnerable life positions than others, and we need the folks who are relatively less vulnerable to help support those who are more vulnerable.

Financially

Some changes cost money. Sharing our resources involves more than sharing pictures of our cats and dogs and our cookies for bake sales. We also need to share financially.

Associationally or denominationally or in association with liberal and progressive denominations and associations, we can:

• open benefit options to those in shared ministries, including lay communities ministries;
• create crowd-funding platforms for new projects;
• create a digital music licensing and download library for liberal and progressive religious music;
• create a pool of inspirational images and a way

It is easy to talk about what’s wrong and miss our own part in failing to be bearers and builders of hope. Yes, there’s a lot of stuff that is broken and doesn’t work. But how does our faith feed us? How do we share and inspire?

Inspirationally

Our calling, beyond all others as faithful people is to inspire, encourage, and help us aspire to and then fulfill those covenanted faithful promises.

• Be an Inspiration Engine, someone who notices and shares goodness, who creates and offers hope, who connects us to our better selves and to healing and repairing this world.
• Follow brief weekly inspirational messages with practices.
• Be mindful of our need for positive messages.
• Empathize with risk faithers and support them.
• Become a risk faither yourself.

We are all in this together. We need one another to be faithful. We need one another to share resources. We need one another to stay steadfast and fulfill our faithful promises. These are some of the changes we can make, and which we must share.

This is part of the Minns Lecture series related to what Peter Bowden and I shared with “The Age of Collaboration”.

(The text in quotes that follows is from the Rev. Debra Haffner generously answering my questions in February 2013.)

Digital media is helping us be more generous and make more powerful change than ever before.

The Rev. Debra Haffner is practicing a global community ministry, and uses digital media intensively in her work. She founded The Religious Institute and shares the ministry with staffers, volunteers, colleagues, activists, and faith communities.

Can you imagine regularly reaching and mobilizing 6000 religious leaders and another 4000 people of faith on a regular basis? The Religious Institute’s prophetic voice on sexual health, education, and justice in faith communities does that, because they educate, share, and empower people to make a difference.

After Tyler Clementi took his own life, Rev. Haffner “alled on clergy and congregations through social media and her blog on the Washington Post to abandon their sermons on Coming Out Day Sunday and instead addressed their support for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth. Two hundred clergy reported back that they did.”

Rev.Debra reports, “More than 200 Unitarian Universalist ministers and candidates have taken our online course, Sexuality Issues for Religious Professionals. Because of The Religious Institute’s ministry, four denominations now require sexuality training for ministerial candidates. 22 seminaries in the United States now meet the Religious Institute’s criteria for a sexually healthy and responsible Seminary.” When they first started offering the program, only 10 seminaries qualified

Rev. Haffner shares, “We have a built a large following of religious leaders who did not know about us. We have found new members of our clergy network, new lay members of our Faithful Voices Network,  new donors, new supporters, and people who have asked us to speak.”

The Religious Institute has cultivated networks of new financial contributors, volunteers, activists, faith leadership around important issues. Social media based ministry makes a difference in the work of the Religious Institute because of shared ministry. Shared ministry always relies on the power of generosity. People share and join the Institute’s work of education, social and spiritual health, accountability, and care.

Generous spirits, generous actions, generous financial gifts, and generous sharing are what allow this ministry and others fulfill faithful promises and answer our calling of responsibility

I share a covenantal faith with a people who practice the form of religious governance known as congregational. Further, Unitarian Universalists are associational, which is to say, all these congregations are sharing this faithful journey together. We have responsibilities to one another. We share resources. We encourage one another to be better Unitarian Universalists and better Unitarian Universalist congregations than any of us find easy or comfortable. Our General Assembly is our governing body, with the Board of Trustees setting ends based on what our General Assembly decides, and the Staff having the job of helping all of us figure out how to meet those ends. In this system, the Moderator is the Chief Governance Officer, the President is the Chief Executive Officer in that he is supposed to execute, or complete, the ends (and is accountable to the Board of Trustees), and the congregational delegates meeting are not only stakeholders - for we have many more stakeholders than we have enfranchised - but the ones in charge. Every committee, working group, team, board, and associated organizations exist to help us in this work of encouraging and making it possible for us to actually fulfill our faithful promises.

At least, that’s the plan and the agreement we share.

With the efforts of a lot of people, including our Moderator, Gini Courter, and the wishes of the General Assembly, the annual decision making process is figuring out how to use digital media to bring more of the folks already technically enfranchised, but regularly unable to participate, into the process. Streaming video of plenaries, live captioning in the assembly (accomplished with a digital link to live translators offsite), digital delegations, and, among the delegates, growing social media use during the process to connect with stakeholders unable to attend in person are all ways that bring more of us together to faithfully work through our issues and answer our shared calling.

Real democracy is difficult and messy, because there are always a lot of issues, a lot of different ideas, and a lot of passion. We have processes, like mini-assemblies, where we work through issues before resolutions come to the floor, which can benefit from further engagement with stakeholders on and off premises via digital media. To be able to call out for help in a public way is, indeed, a vulnerable thing to do. Yet all it takes sometimes is one voice or one idea to help a whole lot of us find common ground. Sometimes that voice or idea is not in the room, for a whole host of reasons, especially economic. A great many of us just do not have the luxury of taking an unpaid week out of our lives, and then manage the expenses of travel and conference attendance, even if done very frugally. That so many do and can make that sacrifice is a huge gift, one that no one in our Association should take for granted.

One of the biggest changes that digital media has wrought and continues to bring about in the past ten years is the increase in organizational transparency. We can easily create and share documents about decisions and research (successes and failures). Not only does this kind of sharing create more trust, it also allows us to be more accountable to one another and to our faithful promises. We can go much further with transparency, creating good digital archives and inviting people to take research and programs and share their iterations of them. We can stream video of important meetings, and provide transcripts of them in a timely manner. We can put time for stakeholder questions, recognizing that many of our stakeholders are not enfranchised in our current system of governance. That recognition means remembering we are part of a religious movement and a religion that makes a difference, and are not here just for our own care, but to serve the whole world.

We can go much further with digital media in our day to day faith democracy, inviting conversations about possible initiatives, noticing and sourcing ideas and projects that are working well in faith communities (congregations + ), and risking faithing publicly day by day together. We need to involve all our stakeholders - that is, everyone who is faithing alongside, in and out of congregations, our multi-faith partners, and our partners in community and world well-being who have no faith whatsoever.

Digital media makes sharing the faith journey with each other so much easier, if we’re willing to practice democracy well as the spiritual discipline it is, and attending to our faithful promises that every person matters, the well-being of the planet matters, and we are here to serve. We are not going to be comfortable fulfilling these promises. But that’s the funny and amazing thing about faithfulness - it has nothing to do with comfort and everything to do with answering well how we have been called. We’ve been called to leave no one behind, to aid love in transforming the world, to care for the planet, and to make sure every one can share their gifts for goodness’ sake.  How we answer every day is the real test of faith.

In preparation for the Minns Lecture for March 9th, “The Age of Collaboration,” my co-presenter, Peter Bowden, and I have a weekly question. This week’s question is:

What does it mean to be a member of a community?

We tend to think we know what community is, based from our existing experiences. Community is:

• a network of people who rely upon one another (family, friends, neighbors, towns with volunteer emergency services, a peer support group, a faith community)
• who engage in meaningful and frivolous activities together (such as: a community of scholars, a community of artists, friends who play together, a watershed protection community, a faith community)
• who live in a particular place or area (such as: Lovell, Maine; a commune; a housing association or council; a bio-region; a faith community)
• who share ownership in something (a condo association, a co-op, a faith community)
• who practice together (such as: a sporting community,  a crafting community, a faith community).

You might notice that faith communities historically fulfill all those definitions of community.

Communities rely on certain traits and practices to be enduring. A flash mob is a kind of community, but it is an ephemeral kind, until you realize you’re meeting up with an engaging in public art or demonstrations with others and grow more enduring connections, or if the flash mob arises from an existing network of people engaged in a shared practice our pursuit together, such as economic change or joyful public art.

Communities require:

• commitment
• responsibility
• right action

Communities are networks of people who share values and figure out how to rely on each other, work fruitfully together, and create more meaningful lives together. 

Digital communities function all the same ways. There are digital networks that share ownership, such as maintaining a wikispace, which is an information sharing cooperative. There are digital communities that form activist networks and engage in social change, and digital communities gathered for peer support, creative arts, scientific endeavors, and entertainment.

Communities, like all living networks, express qualities of emergence: they innovate, experiment, and change over time, developing new forms. That is precisely what is happening through social media: people are innovating and connecting in exciting and often wonderful and deeply life enriching ways through these digital tools.

Digital faithing occurs when people create communities of study, communities of spiritual practices, communities of faithful action (especially expressions of generosity & social justice), communities of equipping (administration, creating and sharing resources, encouragement & coaching). These communities may be more traditionally structured and center around websites or congregations, or they may be more emergent in structure arising from spontaneous engagements and network development, and both forms may work together, just as chance encounter and intentional community always have.

Where I most often bump into assumptions is the belief that digital communities cannot be meaningful. The real test of any community is: would your life, the lives of others, and the planet be a worse place if the community did not exist?

Too often, in our consumer and individual-centered culture, we stop at the first part of the question: would my life be worse if this community did not exist? It is a good question, but it neglects the reality that we are all in this together, and our well-being is dependent on each other and on the well-being of this planet. To truly answer that first part of the question, we have to accept that we are dependent on the well-being of the whole.

You might not think you need social media based communities, but a whole lot of people do, as we set about caring for each other across great and small distances, nurture family connections, share news, organize socially and politically, and create new ways to help one another and the world together. As a Unitarian Universalist, I believe there is a moral imperative for people of faith to participate in the well-being of the world, and that means joining and growing, experimenting with and failing at, risking again and succeeding in digital faith community creation, emergence, and endurance.

What communities are you a member of? What does community mean to you? How might you faithfully participate in, create, or sustain community using digital tools?

You can still register for the Minns Lectures March 8-9th, 2013! They’re free!

Good social media ministries of faith development, social justice, pastoral care, multifaith dialogue, and spiritual practices all share three elements: (1) consistency over the long haul, (2) interaction with a community of followers, and (3) interaction with those the ministries follow and their peers. Each piece of the social media ministry takes care and attention. This week, let’s focus on building a consistent framework.

Before we do so, it is important to know your spiritual gifts and who you are ministering to. My social media ministry is thick with the ministry of encouragement. The people and institutions I connect most with are folks who are working to live in steadfast love, whether they belong to a faith community or not, and they appreciate encouragement. Encouragement happens to be a gift I can offer. Fortunately, it is also a gift lots of others offer, and I can share encouraging words, music, and art from others.

How do you already think through your ministry year? What are the seasons you observe? What resources does your community require in those seasons? What resources are shared during those times? Personally, I integrate several calendars to help me structure my social media ministry.  Since I’m a Unitarian Universalist minister, I include the seasons and times that are important to Unitarian Universalists. For example, I know when the stewardship seasons are because I want to provide helpful resources and encouragement around stewardship. I know when important meetings are because I want to pray some encouraging words. (Remember that I’m practicing a ministry of encouragement.) I also use a multifaith calendar to help me attend to my faith neighbors, and to help us all be more mindful and better neighbors to one another. Doing so lead me to engage more too with multifaith families, who can still feel like outsiders in many faith communities. In 2011-2012 I am also part of a group of faith leaders sharing a theme a month for twelve months.  Those themes affect my ministry. I also incorporate United Nations recognition days into my calendar, because they are not days promoting one nationality (my ministry is based in the United States, but is global) and because they promote values and issues consistent with my faith, including global community and world peace.

Once you have a sense of your ministry year, your gifts, and the communities with which and to which you are ministering, then you can create a schedule that will make sense to you. Let me take December 2011 as an example. This month, the theme is Hope, a plethora of faith holidays show up as well as United Nations recognition days, and many people are particularly struggling spiritually and emotionally with the season. In 2011, I shared resources related to James Luther Adams’ five smooth stones of liberal religion, immigration as a moral issue, peace practices and ethical eating. In 2012, I have been sharing resources on the spiritual practices of Reverence, Generosity, Learning, Community, Creativity, Sabbath, and Joy, on immigration as a moral issue and on ethical eating.

My schedule for Thursday, December 1, 2011 looked like this:

Chalice Lighting: Hope guide us into the adventure of loving, into the great gift of mercy, into generous joy. #chalicelight

Prayer: Morning Prayer Dec. 1 http://universalistprayers.org/2011/11/morning-prayer-december-1-2011.html

Daily Quote: Every action in our lives touches some chord that will vibrate in eternity. – E.H. Chapin (Universalist, minister)

Spirit Question: How are you acting for, in and with hope today? #spiritquestion

Holiday Prayer: #UU Rev. Wayne Arnason’s Holiday Season Prayer: http://www.uua.org/worship/words/meditations/submissions/5628.shtml

Observances Info: World AIDS Day 2011 – Get the facts http://www.worldaidscampaign.org/

World AIDS Day – Faith Advocacy Tool Kit http://www.worldaidscampaign.org/2011/10/faith-advocacy-toolkit/

Carbondale to Kabwe: Growth of an anti-HIV/AIDS Partnership http://www.uua.org/peace/stories/124384.shtml #uu #uua

Event to participate in: [TweetChat at Noon – sponsored by We Make The Change Florida @wmtcfl ]

Evening Prayer: Evening Prayer Dec. 1 http://universalistprayers.org/2011/11/evening-prayer-december-1-2011.html

5 Smooth Stones: 4^th Stone: Change-Agent – Halting the Spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa http://www.thp.org/what_we_do/key_initiatives/hiv_aids_and_gender/overview

Chalice Extinguishing: Breath of Life infuse us with hope to keep acting for merciful justice & in bold compassion. #chaliceout

Being the first Thursday of the month, it was also #TheologicalThurs on Twitter, when I shout-out a thanks to my theological peeps, whose diverse ministries enrich my life. More recently, I have shifted #TheologicalThursday or #TheologicalThurs to name those I’ve conversed with that week, or especially appreciated that month.

Note I also scheduled myself to participate in a community event that wasn’t faith based and I wasn’t leading. If I would attend such a forum locally as part of my ministry, I attend such fora digitally as part of my ministry.

Each week, I also include specific times to post blogs and other resources, like videos.

This kind of schedule can seem daunting to someone new to social media ministry. But I developed this schedule over time. First, I started with a daily 100-character inspirational message. Then, I added my daily prayer blog. Thirdly I added the spiritual practice of my faith tradition, the chalice lighting and chalice extinguishing (#chalicelight and #chaliceout).

Many pieces of my social media ministry schedule are things I already do, just sharing them in different ways. Since I have core spiritual practices I do every day, I just needed to spend a few minutes making those available to everyone. I was writing and teaching already; giving myself a schedule just made me more disciplined in sharing what I was creating and teaching. I read and collect resources online as part of my being in a larger community, continuing education, and developing thoughts and reflections and teaching. Sharing those resources across a schedule made sense because I was finding those resources helpful, inspiring, challenging, or otherwise affecting my faith.

Try setting up a minimal framework to begin developing consistency in your social media ministry. The discipline will grow and stretch, but also give something for a community to develop around and for your peers and the people you follow to connect with. Showing up consistently is part of how we build this global house of study.

This post is a reblog from an archived blog, since the material remains relevant.

One of the traditions my own denomination, Unitarian Universalism, cherishes is our tradition of theological innovation and adaptation. As economies and ecologies, scientific understanding and liberation movements have changed, so has my faith community, sometimes leading, sometimes following. Being open to what’s new for faithful people is the first of the five foundational practices for liberal religious people.

But then there’s this tradition that observes in many of our faith communities that change occurs somewhere between calendar and geologic time, with the emphasis more on the geologic end – and I’m not talking about sudden tectonic plate shifts.

Social media has been around long enough to develop variations in culture, to become a place where speakers of non-colonial and historically marginalized languages create stronger relationships and find freedom to work together. Social media is a perfect environment for those of us scattered in disaporic experiences – and one of the biggest reasons why smart mobile devices and access plans need to be inexpensive enough to be in everyone’s hands.

Authority in social media is primarily relational. Yes, there are some folks with institutional authority, and they’re able to continue to use social media as a broadcast medium. But social media’s primary shaping value is the social aspect – relationships. The people who are leaders in social media are people facilitating meaningful relationships, whatever their particular passions. We long to be part of and co-creators of communities of joy, of spiritual practice, of ethical action, of learning, and of caring. We’re seeking meaningful digital sanctuaries to which we belong by participating in the life of those sanctuaries.

I applaud the creation and building of digital steeples – those points of connection that draw people into investigating if here is a real place for their gifts, a digital support for generous people caring and sharing their vocations – where their passions can meet the world’s needs.  Religious communities and religious leaders need to create digital steeples. They are an important way to claim a sanctuary space and to create a community that is truly a cloud of witnesses.

But if appreciating the power of the digital steeple to living out the purpose of religious organizations is a big cultural change, creating the digital sanctuary seems to be an even larger one. Why? Because of authority, authenticity, and co-creativity. Netizens love and seek places without prescripted and prescriptive experiences, because one of the netizen loves and appreciates being able to contribute each one’s unique gifts, talents, and experiences to the community. The digital cloud of witnesses is one that’s very active and engaged in living with integrity and agency. The larger story we’re living into is one in which every one belongs, is valued, is freed to give, and is appreciated. That’s the same story at the heart of my Unitarian Universalist faith, which is why I’m involved in supporting digital steeples and in nurturing digital sanctuaries. Every one matters. Every one has gifts and calling. The good and the gracious needs all our efforts and all of us freed to answer that calling for love, for justice, and for restoration.

This post is a reblog from an archived blog, since the material remains relevant.

Faith communities are both communities of worship and reverence and communities where we learn how to be faithful people. How do faithful people respond to a family in crisis? How do faithful people welcome strangers? How do faithful people engage respectfully with differences? How do faithful people attend to when we hurt one another, to legacies requiring reconciliation, to bullying and greed when they show up? In our celebrations and in our troubles, faith communities are places where we learn the practices of living faithfully.

How our faith communities practicing and teaching living faithfully digitally, as part of living faithfully in our whole lives?

Social media offers us the opportunity to have faith communities everywhere, scattered around the globe. Social media gives regular people the tools to be creative, generous change agents locally and globally. Social media gives everyone the tools to thicken and deepen relationships, including, relationships with the sacred.

How is your faith community supporting people in being creative, generous change agents for goodness?

When we blog as faithful people, are we blogging in a way that tears people and communities down or are we blogging in a way to grow people in spirit, to turn us to living more generously, creatively, and compassionately?

Do we attend to our relationships digitally with the same kindness and care we attend to relationships face-to-face? We can have so many more connections with people in our faith communities through each week. Are we treating people with worth and dignity face-to-face and digitally?

Are we answering a world filled with fear, anger, isolation, and loathing as people of wisdom and peace? Are we choosing to be contagious with generosity or contagious with bitterness? Both feelings leap quickly heart to heart. But how are we as faithful people called to be?

This year, as you and your community faiths together, check in and ask, how are we doing practicing and teaching living faithfully digitally as part of living faithfully in our whole lives.

I’m reblogging this updated piece, once posted on another blog that was archived. The questions and concerns remain relevant for congregations to consider.