Seven "C's" of Effective Communication

 In a webinar that I recently attended, the speaker listed "Seven C's of Effective Communication."  I thought it was a good list.  Here they are: 

1. Clear
2. Concise
3. Concrete
4. Correct
5. Coherent
6. Complete
7. Courteous

What do you think?  

You Balance the Federal Budget

This interactive game challenges you to apply your own values and priorities to balance the federal budget! If you choose to participate, the results from your game can be sent for inclusion in real studies to determine how the public wants the budget to look and how real people would sort the priorities to balance the budget. Sound intriguing? Set aside some time and try it out!

Food Justice

Stephen Ritz teaches in a challenging environment.  Many of his kids are homeless, have special education needs, and would be considered unemployable when they graduated, if they graduated.  Ritz has transformed those statistics, improved the odds for those kids, and turned this idea into a project that is feeding hundreds if not thousands of people. 

Free Majid Tavakoli, Iranian Student Democracy Activist

Be a witness to stand in support of democracy in Iran and, in so doing, let the oppressors know that power acquired through violence is no match for the power of peace.  Please learn about the issue from this blog post, then copy the links and forward them to your friends! 

Let's help the video go viral worldwide! 

On December 7th, 2009, Iranian Ph.D. student Majid Tavakoli was arrested after speaking to a group at his school, the Amirkabir University of Technology.  He was severely beaten at the time of his arrest, and it is reported that he has also been tortured.  It is reported that he was made to dress in women's clothing so that he could be photographed.  An effort was made to use the photos to humiliate him.  The effort backlashed: 

A movement has now begun for men to dress in hijab (a headscarf which is mandatory dress for women in Iran) and publish photographs of themselves on the internet, to express their solidarity with Majid. 

Wikipedia states: 

[Men who dress in hijab in protest to Majid's imprisonment] are calling for an end to Iran’s mistreatment of prisoners including Tavakoli. At the same time they are also sending a strong a message of solidarity with women in their fights for equal rights. One message echoed by many Iranian men was "until Iranian women are free, Iran will not be free. Iranian men: let's begin wearing the chador in solidarity with Majid AND the WOMEN of Iran".

One woman writes in commentary to the YouTube video (above): 

Never been this proud of our men. You guys define the word Ma'arefat. You proved that in this world it is possible to be manlier by dressing up as women. Our values have made a huge heap into the future and we are all riding the waves of this amazing cultural revolution, thanks to Majid and thanks to all these brave, honorable men.

Another person writes,

man ham majid tavakoli hastam, ich bin auch ein majid tawakoli, i am majid tavakoli, hameye mardome iran majide tawakoli hastan, drod be majide gahreman, nango nefrin bar welayate jahlo siyahiye waghih dar tamamiyatash az khomeiniye dajal ta khameneiye shirei, jawido sarboland irano irani

Join me in affirming, with the cloud of witnesses, "I am Majid".  Please forward this link to your friends. 

Technorati Tags: iran,democracy,majid tavakoli

Fallout From the Mushroom Cloud: Part V of Using Social Media to Build Community

September 15, 2009

"If your non-profit isn't acting with as much energy and guts as it takes to get funded in Silicon Valley or featured on Digg, then you're failing in your duty to make change." Quote from Seth Godin's blog entry, "The Problem With Non," posted September 15, 2009. 

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This is the fifth in my blog series about using social media to build community organizations.  Part I of this series was inspired the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church, Bruce Reyes-Chow, who blogged about "Top Ten Reasons Churches and Pastors Resist Social Media".  On the same day I read his post, I also attended a meeting of the Outreach Committee of my own church.  One of the issues that came up at that meeting was the issue of balancing budgeting priorities among various things like newspaper ads, web page design, resources to keep the web page updated, investment in wireless Internet and other technologies for the church building.  During this conversation, I observed a distinct generation gap:  An older member of the group was discussing the need for a newspaper ad, and a younger member of the group replied with a comment that both shocked and enlightened.  He said that most young people will not look at a newspaper to find a church; they will use Google and look online. 

I agree.  Paper is becoming increasingly irrelevant in my own household. 

The next Sunday, as I looked across the heads of people in the sanctuary for church, I noticed that most of them had gray hair.  Where are the "young" people?  Are they failing to engage in community, or are they just failing to engage in my community?  If they are not attracted to my community, then what is it about my community that fails to appeal?  Does my own community in fact lack vitality, or is it just missing one element, perhaps communication?  It's a crisis, as local community organizations, not just churches, struggle with how to remain engaged and vibrant in the local community.  What makes people want to be a part of that?  What is the role of social media in the local organization, and what role is played by the non-geographic community? 

As my thoughts grew, so did the length of this series on using Social Media to Build Community Organizations. 

I believe the Internet is to the Printing Press as the Nuclear Bomb was to Conventional Warfare.  The Internet, and Social Media, has been released in the world.  The fallout from that mushroom cloud is transforming society. The question is, how will we respond?   Immediately after "the Bomb" was dropped, Japan knew that something fundamental had shifted in the way war could be conducted.  Surrender was almost immediate.  We ought to surrender our ideas about conventional communication just as quickly.  Assuming we do want to keep pace with the 21st Century, which way do we go?   

Here's how one church has gone.  For what it's worth, the church that created this video also offers an "online" congregation in addition to traditional services: 

The notion that the Internet has changed the way our society operates is not news to anyone.  In his book The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman discusses the revolutionary ways in which the Internet has created opportunities for dispersal of information.  The Internet has eliminated geographic obstacles and boundaries for many kinds of human endeavors.  People can now engage in communities that are no longer restricted to one geographic locale.  As a result, the fundamental geography of human relationships has now shifted also. 

Here's another video, this one discussing the emergent church and challenges to the future of the institutional church.  But, do we really have to choose?

In my view, social media is vital to any congregation or community organization that seeks to remain relevant in today's world.  I can't tell you how or what or give a simple roadmap about how to make your organization relevant and vital.  All I can say is, you'd better figure it out or your organization will go the way of the small family farm or the mimeograph machine.  In this series, I've tried to provide some thoughts as well as some concrete suggestions that might help in terms of finding the right balance.

There are many beneficial side effects of opening the world of ideas and communication to everyone.  In Part II of the series, I used the story of Mary and Martha to illustrate what I viewed as the importance of paying heed to both aspects of human nature:  the mental and imaginative side (as represented by Mary) and the embodied and practical side (as represented by Martha).  I urged that churches ought to find ways of embracing and incorporating social media.  I linked to a web site showing how to create a podcast and to a YouTube video discussing the value of Twitter. 

There's just one problem, though.  The Marthas among us rightly ask with alarm, "If we focus purely on the world of ideas, and build our community around that, what happens to the local soup kitchen?"  This led to Part III of this series, in which I urged that social media, itself, is not the enemy.  Social media is a tool, and we simply must learn how to use it wisely -- and with intention -- to build community at the local level. 

On the other hand, there are indeed those among us who don't feel any particular commitment to local community.  They may even take a laissez faire attitude that if a local community organization dies, it must not have been relevant anyway.  Like a business that fails to match with its target market. In Part IV of this series I argue in favor of local community.  I confess, I am a social media maven.  I feel deeply nurtured by my online community and contacts.  Yet, I am also deeply and profoundly embedded in and committed to my local community. I was separated from my local church while I lived in China for four years.  Like the Prodigal Son upon his return, my absence from my local church helped me learn to appreciate it more deeply upon my return.  Not only am I in love with my local church, I also think there is value in my being accountable and responsive to my local church.  Though it's not always a message I want to hear, sometimes I need to be reminded that I should wash dishes at the local soup kitchen, and I especially need to be reminded on those days when I don't feel like it.  

Yet I still return to the idea that we must nurture every side of our Being, not just our embodied, physical self but also our spiritual and intellectual side.  And churches are making a grave mistake if they think it's just a matter of "publicity".  Social media is a new way of thinking, relating, of doing business, of being in relationship! 

Social media has revolutionized not only how we communicate, but how we think.  My brother-in-law is a pediatrician.  When my youngest child was born, he told me "No TV until Munchkin is two years old.  The difference in stimulation changes the way the brain is physically wired."  Well, right.  It changes the way we think, literally.  There has been a sea change, and we are witness to it.  I observe young people and they do think differently, perceive differently, and relate differently, than I do.  Just as I think, perceive and relate differently than my parents and my grandparents.  It's not really practical just to get rid of the TV and the computer and the telephone.  We live in the Age of the Internet.  What I propose is that we find wholesome and fruitful ways to embrace and utilize the new technology. 

This leads me now to propose the following concrete suggestions concerning use of social media by churches and other community organizations: 

(a) Social media can be used to strengthen individuals personally through access to information and resources.  In furtherance of this goal, community organizations can enable access to information by installing internet (preferably high speed, wireless), and making it available to their constituents.  Churches can organize training and sharing sessions such as instruction in Internet use.  Churches should make sure that all children are trained in how to keep themselves and their personal information safe from Internet predators. 

(b) Social media can nurture healthy online communities through opportunities for wholesome and healthy interaction.   Social media has spurred new ways of meeting and talking, such as chats and tweetups.  Church groups can facilitate chats and tweetups.  Churches need to be proactive about training and guiding young people in safe use of these activities. 

(c) Social media can nurture deeper relationships among individuals within the local community by enabling greater depth of communication about subjects not normally discussed in chatty conversations.  Churches and community organizations can encourage deeper communication and blogging.  Specific topics can be used as conversation starters, much like a Sunday School class discussion format.  Volunteers could take turns moderating these discussions. 

(d) Social media can be used to broadcast detailed information about local community organizations and events.  To be useful communication tools, church web pages need to be relevant, engaging, and up to date.  Twitter and Facebook also offer venues for communication of current events.  Churches can create events on Facebook and encourage members to publicize the events through this medium. 

(e) Social media can be used to educate virtual bystanders or researchers about the local community organization and opportunities within that community.  Most people in the younger age groups no longer look in a newspaper to get information about local organizations and volunteer opportunities.  Instead, they will look online to find a community organization.  Is your organization's web page interesting and inviting?  Do you give clear instructions about location and contact information?  Are dates and times of events clearly stated and readily apparent from a glance at your web page? 

(f) Social media can be used as a resource for sharing events such through media such as video and audio broadcast and photo sharing.  Is your organization taking advantage of easy digital technology, free resources for creating and broadcasting podcasts?  Do you post video of your best sermons and outreach activities on YouTube?   

(g) What possibilities have I not thought of?  I am interested in the general project of using online resources to strengthen individuals and community -- in all these ways -- both among geographically dispersed people as well as within geographically local community.  What other ways is your church using social media?  Please share in a comment below! 

In conclusion, social media can expand horizons of communication for both individuals and for local community organizations.  Social media does this not only by enabling relations that are not bound by geographic restrictions, but also by increasing effectiveness of communication within the local community.  In so doing, it can deepen relationships of individuals who work within local community organizations and strengthen ties in the local community as well as in the "virtual" community.  I hope to continue to blog and journal about this. Please comment as well! 

Technorati Tags: social media,presbyterian bloggers,presbyterian,presbymergent

What Would Jesus Tweet? Part IV of Using Social Media to Build Community

In my last blog entry on this subject, found HERE, I discussed how Jesus's home community was unable to bridge the difference between the Jesus they had known from his childhood and the man who had grown into his calling.  I used a New Yorker cartoon of a dog using the internet to discuss the disjunction between the boy they had known growing up and the prophet he had become. 

 

Fundamentally, the people in his hometown could not get beyond their vision of Jesus as being like the dog in this cartoon -- as the hometown son of Joseph the  Carpenter.  They never could see him for who he truly was, in his "online" persona as a prophet.  Yet, in spite of the tension between the blossom of his calling and his roots in the soil of his childhood, and the fact that perhaps in his local community he was a bit like a square peg in a round hole, Jesus did not abandon all ties with his family and local community.  And we should not, either, even in the times when we feel slightly out of sync with our local community.  

Local community serves a valuable purpose.  First of all, we can derive important satisfactions from friendships within our local community.  Not everyone in our local communities rejects us for who we are or sees us as dogs.  Ideally, local communities are nurturing places where we receive as well as give friendship.  

Secondly, my local friends keep me grounded, force me to keep to the center. Local community supplies ballast in the keel of my ship, helping me maintain equilibrium.  Without this ballast, there's a danger I might capsize from lack of balance.  Local communities provide valuable feedback, checks and balances that prevent me from becoming isolated and eccentric, as unrecognizable as the paranoid, neurotic, unkempt Howard Hughes at the end of his life.  Local communities force me to remember to brush my teeth.   Good hygiene is not a bad life skill. 

Third, local communities provide valuable insight I might otherwise miss.  Local communities force me to practice listening to others, being polite.  Through building and maintaining local friendships with people who are not "just like me," I am forced (in a good way) to practice the skill of being interested in others.  I must open myself to the possibility that I might be persuaded by viewpoints or perspectives I might not otherwise have seen.  Their demands force me to be persuasive and social, as well.  If I want to convert my local friends to my passion, then I must not be offensive, I must give them reasons, I must make them want to like me; I must persuade them.  Honest feedback from my skeptical friends forces me to listen and respond and thus nurtures me toward a more coherent presence in the world.  I am also made into a better person by being confronted with concrete evidence of my own imperfection.  When I see myself through the eyes of others, I am reminded in turn not to be too harsh or insensitive or judgmental of others. 

Fourth, local communities nourish the body and soul as well as the mind, by providing physical nurture to individuals, including me, who reside within their boundaries.  This is a give and take.  In my role as a friend within a local community, I might give a hug on a sad day, serve food at a soup kitchen, make phone calls for a local charity, or notice if my neighbor hasn't come outside in a few days.  If I hope for my community to remain a vital, nurturing place, then I need to nurture it.  Who else will drive for Meals On Wheels, if not me?  Who else will answer the telephone for a local nonprofit, if not me?  Who else will deliver bags to the local food bank, if not me?  Our participation in civic life is what makes our community a place where we would, ourselves, want to live.  Collectively, we do make a "difference". 

What reasons can you add to the list of how we benefit from being in local community, by leaving a comment below?

Using the analogy of Mary and Martha in the New Testament, I argued in Part I of this series of journal entries that both aspects of community building  -- local and nonlocal -- are important.  We must not neglect the more intellectual, thoughtful side of our being which can be so strongly nurtured by online communities.  Yet, we also must not neglect our local, embodied communities.  I once heard an anecdotal story that as Constantinople was being overrun by Goths, the city leaders were having a debate about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.  We must take care that online, disembodied, discussions, must never be allowed to displace pressing needs grounded in the here and now. 

Okay, hopefully I've established the importance of both online and local community.  Whether it is local or distant, being part of a community weaves us into the web of the human endeavor, of life.  Participating in community building activities, if they are wholesome and not at the expense of ourselves or others, is good for us no matter where it occurs.   

My goal is to stimulate thought about how community organizations can make the best use of new tools of technology to build that community.  How can community organizations use social media to nurture individuals and their own organizations? 

I can think of several ways:  Click here for "the answer"  ;-) 

 

Technorati Tags: presbyterian bloggers,presbyterian,presbymergent

If Jesus Were A Dog, Would He Tweet? Part III of Using Social Media to Build Community

September 2, 2009

This is the third part of my series on using social media to build local community.  I argued in Part I that churches and community organizations should not resist social media but rather ought to consider it as one tool in the toolbox of building community.  In Part II, I discussed very briefly some ideas about how applications such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter could be used to benefit local community organizations by building community within them.  Today I ruminate further about the interrelationship between online versus embodied communities. 

If you prefer not to read too much and are already sold on social media as communication tools for local organizations, I'll share some links to practical tools for increasing social media effectiveness.  The list is by no means complete or exhaustive, but just what I've run across today:  Nine YouTube Features You May Not Know About ,  Ten Cool Twitter Applications ,  and How to Create a Podcast 

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For those who enjoy a longer discussion:

I observe the earth is shifting in terms of how people communicate, get information, and even how they define community.  People -- particularly those under the age of 40 -- are finding and participating in "like minded" communities that are unbounded by physical proximity.  Younger people are abandoning more conventional notions about the value of "local" friendships and community organizations.  People also no longer exhibit so much loyalty to "brand names" in terms of denomination or other community outreach. 

Community organizations, including churches, grapple with the challenges of how to adapt to this new world.  I believe that while churches must be careful not to abandon older and more physical notions of community, it would be a mistake to fail to adopt new tools that add vitality to community and build deeper, more meaningful relationships. 

Social media, generally speaking, unleashes individuals from geographic constraints in terms of building relationships and community.  In the book The Language of Genes, author Steve Jones explains how invention of the bicycle resulted an entire new level of genetic mixing in the human population: with invention of the bicycle, a young person could actually travel to the next village and meet a future husband or wife in that venue rather than being limited to the small group of people in their native village.  Well, the Internet makes even the next village seem provincial.  According to some rumors circulating on the Internet, one out of every eight people who got married last year in the USA, met in an online context.  The Internet, and the social media revolution, has indeed flattened the world and opened up entire new possibilities for relationships, unbounded by geographic limitations. 

Because of the way social media does open windows to relationships that might not be possible in a strictly local society, social media is often viewed as something unrelated or even harmful to local community.  Perhaps it is!  As people satisfy more and more of their relational needs through use of online and non-geographic based communities, there has been a decline in reliance on, and support of, communities based more on geography.  Because relationships based on social media can directly compete with geographic based community in meeting social needs, social media can be a threat to local communities -- like churches and food banks --  where ties are primarily based on geographic proximity. 

If social media is a threat to the traditional idea of community, what can (or should) local community organizations do to "fight back" against this weakening of traditional community ties?  Should social media be viewed as evil for contributing to the demise of local community? 

I would argue that social media is not the enemy.  Social media is nothing but a tool for building communities.  So far, social media has been used mainly for the building of "virtual" communities -- it enables communication and organization to a degree which frightens governments like China and Iran, which have cut off access to online communities for that very reason.  If local community organizations use social media intentionally, however, meaning in a way that has intention and is not accidental, I believe social media can be used effectively to build local as well as non-geographic community. 

Social media have many positive uses, one of which is actually to liberate people from geographic constraints on information.  Suppose a person is passionately interested in topic A.  Perhaps that person is able to find or build an online community that is build around topic A.  Assuming that topic A is something positive (perhaps a topic like, how to use social media to strengthen community organizations?), the person can engage with people from around the world in dialogue devoted particularly to that topic.  An entire world of ideas -- and contacts with people who share the same interest -- has been opened to that person.  Another positive use is that social media enables people to maintain ties that they might otherwise lose to time and distance.  Many people have experienced this through location of a long lost high school friend by way of the Internet. 

In the case of the person interested in topic A:  If no one in my local community organization has a similar interest, perhaps I might view my local organization as quaint and irrelevant.  Yet, nothing could be further from the truth. 

Part of the value of a local community organization is that it keeps us rooted in the important soil of who we are, where we are.  There is a famous cartoon from the New Yorker Magazine in which a dog, while using the Internet, tells his friend, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." 

 

 

That's certainly true.  Exchanges of the type I just described -- passionately shared interest in one narrowly focused subject -- and friendships made on that basis, are extremely limited.  When I "talk" in an online context, I am interacting with another individual merely about one small aspect of that person's life.  For example, unless you knew me in person, you might not know that I have written this blog entry in my free time today instead of washing laundry to make sure my family has clean clothes to wear.  In contrast to this, the people in my local community know who I really am.  They can see -- from looking at me -- that I am really a dog.  They know if my family is wearing disheveled or unlaundered clothes. 

Jesus ran into this issue -- the disjunction between how his local community perceived him versus who he felt he really was -- when he returned to his home town after traveling as an itinerant Rabbi.  Traveling outside his home community, Jesus had become known as a powerful voice for truth, but when he came back to his hometown those gifts were not recognized.  In the story, told in Matthew 13:54 - 58, it's apparent that the local people knew his physical background so well that they could not accept his "online" persona.  They said, "Is this not the carpenter's son?" In response to their unbelief, Jesus replied, "A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household." 

This illustrates that Jesus was confronted head on with the disjunction between who he felt called to be -- his "online" persona if you will, meaning his passions and calling and his non-local community of people who "followed" him -- versus the local boy he had been known as in his home town.  In other words, his local friends and family knew him only as a dog, and they weren't going to accept him any other way. 

The tension between Jesus's identity as a dog -- as the carpenter's son -- and his online identity, the prophet, seems irreconcilable, doesn't it?  And there is but one correct response to those who would limit us in life to our previous identity as a dog.  Jesus demonstrated this when he encouraged Mary to pursue her calling as his student; and he demonstrates it in his response to the disbelief of his own local community and his family. 

In what may be one of the more difficult family episodes in the New Testament, Jesus is confronted by his family in Mark Chapter 3, when they frankly think he has gone insane.  Arriving where Jesus is teaching to a large crowd, they have the intent to "take charge of him" and take him home.  His mother and brothers, unable to get squeeze into where his is, send someone in to Jesus to call him out.  The person delivers the message to Jesus that his mother wants to see him.  His reply? 

"Who are my mother and my brothers?  Here are my mother and my brothers!  Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother!"  (Mark 3:34, 35)

Jesus, known as the son of Joseph the Carpenter, was so much more than that. He had a vision of a community that extended far beyond the borders of the town where he lived as a child.  I don't really know if he would have tweeted.  But I'm pretty sure it would be a mistake for community organizations to overlook the potential of social media as a tool that can be used intentionally to build community. 

For my ideas about specific ways social media can be used to build community, click HERE for the next installment in this series. 

 

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