Faith Works 6-12-21

Faith Works 6-12-21

Jeff Gill

Settings and medium and messages

___

If you work with churches and camps you are excited about the opportunity to bring youth together again. There are still some cautions and guidelines to keep in mind, especially with children under 12 still unvaccinated, but CDC recommendations give us ways to do outdoor programming we lost last summer.

The need for some care and changing how we used to do things, though, still presents an ongoing challenge, for kids's activities and for summer church in general, whether you call it VBS or something else, in a church basement or out in a park or even on a street corner.

My big personal involvement for many years has been with Cub Scouts, and Cub Day Camp in particular. Last summer, of course, we had to call the whole thing off. As restrictions shifted, we did a Cub-o-ree last fall which tried to make up for what we'd missed, but it was a one-day weekend thing, smaller and certainly more constrained.

Are we "back to normal"? No, and that's a long story. But many things have changed in the last two years, and this summer is going to be different, for organizational and structural reasons, even as the refrain sings on and on like a camp song: "let's get back to normal!" We are doing some things differently, and holding onto other aspects of the Cub day camp experience. 

I look back over this past year, and think about how we've handled the small group meetings, what Cubs call "dens" and even some larger local groups, or "packs" when they got together. As a resource person in the county, I've learned how to do programs for young kids in some very different ways than I ever had, and truth be told, I'd gotten pretty good (I thought) at doing my thing when invited to present at a den or pack meeting.

But do teaching and hands-on learning in a parking lot? On a video conference with some kids visible and others just a name or initials on their square? I've been in church basements with everyone masked and numbers small and spaced out; I've done a bigger group than I've ever done outside of day camp through my computer camera while never leaving my house.

Teachers and preachers and managers and so many of you are thinking "yeah, tell me about it." Understood, but what I'm still wrestling with is what we've learned and how we apply it moving forward. Through last August, I was still preaching & teaching weekly, using FM transmitters and video cameras and uploading services and studies. Since then, I've been a consumer more than provider, but the school and Scouts side of teaching and learning still have engaged me. In all these spheres, I think we have in common this: we can't "go back to normal." Can we?

"The medium is the message" is Marshall McLuhan's famous phrase from his 1964 book "Understanding Media." This Canadian communications scholar and analyst was warning us nearly 60 years ago that the means we use to communicate may be doing most of the communicating for us, despite what we think we're trying to say. Or as Neil Postman observed in 1985's "Amusing Ourselves to Death," the technological tools we use shape and constrain very closely the content they intend to convey.

Which brings us to technology and video and streaming tools in the church, this summer and on into the rest of 2021, assuming everything epidemiological keeps looking better and better. And they very likely will.

There is an incredible amount of pressure, which from some angles looks like a majority, to drop most if not all of the adaptations we've learned and "get back to normal." And I'm acutely aware that in educational circles, we've all realized that with the best will in the world on both sides of the camera, remote learning is in most cases a distant second best. It works, but not as well as the classroom. Remote counseling, though, seems to be much better "now" compared to in-person "later." Video medical consults? Truth is they were becoming common before COVID. We are getting better at how to use them, and when.

And meetings? C'mon. Very few planning and evaluation gatherings are improved by having everyone drive and sit and be in a room together when they can be a 30 minute video conference.

The task before us is to pick and choose wisely. Our need to get together in worship, for learning, in fellowship, shouldn't displace the new opportunities we've mastered in how to save time, add new perspectives, and increase access through virtual options. What to do about those who retreat into virtuality is a separate discussion.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's ready to spend less time online, but not to just go back to lots of long evenings in the car. Tell him what meetings you won't miss attending at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.