Digital World: Serving in the Global Network as the unifying Pastors

“What is needed therefore is a translation of the Gospel that goes beyond conveying propositions – a translation that concretize the Gospel in individual and communal shape of living. Proclamations of the Gospel must be accompanied by performances that embody in new situations the wisdom and love of God embodied in the cross.”

Kevin J. Vanhoozer (‘On Postmodern Theology’, Cambridge: 2003)

 

Very recently I read an article on Maharashtra state that it continues to maintain its position as the most vibrant state in our country, now progressing towards making it more digital and aiming to become one of the most digitally advanced states in India. Mr. Vijaykumar Gautam IAS, Principal Secretary, Directorate of Information Technology, Government of Maharashtra spoke about the various digital initiatives that are in line in the State, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dream of ‘Digital India’. Government of Maharashtra has already got many feathers of IT initiatives in their e-governance cap. Nagpur has become the first digital district of the state, connecting all 776 gram Panchayats with broadband connectivity, which can be tapped for services like Wi-Fi hotspots for providing internet access to all. In an effort towards cashless economy, the Maharashtra Government is planning to launch its own e-wallet called ‘Maha Wallet’. This shall primarily have features like a user friendly interface for techno savvy as well as novice users, to make hassle free and secure transactions like shopping, utility payments, paying government revenues, fund transfer across other wallets, etc.

 

As Church Pastors, Digital Technology is something which we cannot completely deny today or embrace. It is sweet and sour. We need a middle way. The question is how can that be done? In order to know that, we have to further look into the Digital World and breakdown the theme into smaller sections.

 

Global Network: A Global Network is any communication network which spans the entire Earth.

 

And in today’s world, the Internet is something which is connecting the whole world. Internet is not only connecting the whole universe together and making the world a small village, but is also very substantially altering the human life on an individual as well as a collective level. There are some positive and progressive changes as well as some negative and damaging changes. As the last part of our theme is using word “Unifying”, we agree that there are some disintegrations or fragmentations happening in our society and therefore we have started feeling the need for integration and unity. Hence on the basis of all these, let us think how the digital world is affecting ourselves as Pastors, our church and our ministry. What is our ministry in midst of all these?

 

1. Pastors in a Wired World: Usually we consider the technology as a tool. And till recently we have been thinking that the user of technology can decide on how to use it; and technology cannot alter the “Self” of the user. But digital technology is so powerful & alluring that, in a very subtle and quiet way, it is altering our very “Self” as human beings & pastors. Broadly speaking there are three foundations of Pastoral Ministry:

 

1. Power of Love
2. Need for patience
3. The embodiment of Compassion
4. The Agent of Transformation

 

But these are getting altered rapidly

 

The Internet works on the four different values:

1. The Power of progress
2. Need for speed
3. The Efficacy of Efficiency
4. The Omnipresent Medium

 

What kind of relationships are you having when digital and online communication is replacing the face to face conversations and interactions? We have almost wiped away the habit of writing personal letters and posting the hard copy. Let us not forget that there are still aged parents or elderly relatives who look forward to getting a mail through the post-man. We have moved farther from there to a position where attending calls is not our habit these days, but we prefer texting. Thus, genuine contacts are being replaced by instant messaging and texting. We want to ‘get to the point’ and save time. We avoid dialogue and express our mind-set that engagement with other people is exceedingly exhausting. In a digital world, we have very many ‘contacts’ but very little ‘connections’.  Should this not indicate that certain things are not right?

 

2. The World of Change:

The values that the Digital World is bringing are very subtle changes in our own self and our personality is getting changed.
 

1. Instead of ‘Other centered’ because of the power of divine love, now we are self-centered
2. Instead of waiting patiently for God to reveal His ways we are now very Impatient & Impulsive

• Instead of being life-oriented because of compassion, we are now program oriented because of the desire to be popular & successful

 

If you are constantly connected online, our life is subtly changing us to become very restless, stressed out & distracted human beings. We have started finding it difficult to focus on a particular thing for a long time. We desire change. We long for the weekends and say ‘Thank God it is Friday!’  But Monday carries lots of ‘hang-overs’. We tell our intimate ones that we will go for a vacation. But that never comes! Driven by succession of pre-occupations, we keep postponing our relaxed time together.

 

Thomas L. Friedman has written a new book entitled, “Thank you for being Late” and describes it as an optimist’s guide to thriving in the age of accelerations. It was not long ago that we met over a cup of tea or coffee with dear or near ones, chatted and parted feeling fulfilled. But this is not taking place as and when we want it now, because we are living in a world where rapid changes are happening and the acceleration of the change is beyond all our imaginations. Isn’t it then good to be ‘late’ than being never?

 

3. Role of the Pastor:

A Pastor is one who is called to serve all kinds of people in any given space and time. He does that in response and commitment to the call and commission of the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, who carried out his public ministry here on earth. So, a pastor needs to recognize the ministry of the Lord, in space and time, and at the same time partner with Jesus in carrying a relevant ministry to the lives of individuals and communities in the digital world. Pastoral ministry requires a pastor to be available, composed, calm and focused.
 

One serious question that the present pastor shall ask is whether he is moving closely with the Lord of the Church or instead is getting addicted to the digital world and the on-line life. The best way of checking this is to find out whether we are attending to the mobile phones every now and then, even without our mobile ringing or getting any notifications. If so, we are addicted. The present digital world is enslaving us and altering our commitment to the ministry and to the Lord. Further, we live in a ‘selfie’ world where there is so much rush to establish, prove, build and propogate ourselves in social life, career and in ministry. Self-centeredness, materialism, worldliness, consumerism etc. build our vision of the gospel from seeing beyond ‘self’ and ‘selfishness’. The question that the resurrected Lord asked Peter (St. John 21:15), “Do you love me more than these” comes to us as relevant now.

 

4. Availability of the Pastor:

A pastor, as the servant, is to be available to his people. Psalms 23 speaks about the physical presence of the Shepherd with the sheep. When we are addicted to the digital world, the visit of a friend or a stranger becomes a nuisance. If you are reading the message, or sending one, or even talking to someone, then welcoming the person who is physically present will be delayed and thus giving the person a feeling that his visit was at a wrong time. You will ask the real person to be seated while you are still busy with the virtual person over the mobile. Therefore, the word of greeting or welcome will be a delayed one, which will by then loose all warmth of keeping the relationship. A pastor by virtue of his vocation is ordained to ‘imitate Christ’ who stood on the road to attend to Bartimaeus or crossed the sea to see ‘the Legion of Gerasenes’. A pastor is expected to attend to the flock and take away ‘the otherness’ from the other. People are important and therefore all digital gadgets should take only the second place, giving primary importance not for the self but for the person in front of you as the ‘friend or the stranger.’ A pastor will welcome all and be attentive to their needs.

 

People living in the digital world are numerous and have characteristics different from the other. A pastor has the unifying role in the formation of communities. It is possible for today’s world to replace the physical presence with a virtual presence or by on-line availability. That is the success of technology but not that of a pastoral ministry. A unifying pastor is called to continue the ‘incarnational ministry of Christ’ by incarnating in the life situations of the people.

 

5. Pastor as a Role model:

Pastor is not only a shepherd; he is also a role model – Someone who is revealing God to the world. Paul wrote to the young pastor, “Let no one despise your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.” (1 Timothy 4: 12) The personality of a Pastor is always exposed to the world – his positives as well as the negatives. As pastors when our positives are exposed, it is encouraging. And when the negatives are exposed in a community we are forced to correct ourselves and grow as good pastors. But the ‘online social media’ that gives us a life in a virtual world provides us the convenience of presenting ourselves in a better way by hiding the negatives and even hiding ourselves from the real physical community. It hinders our spiritual growth. Here the personality of a Pastor will be a “Twisted Self”. A genuine life of the pastor is possible only in a physical, visible community where our whole life will be exposed & we become available to the community to encourage them as well as to correct them. The life of a pastor should not be self-centered but people centered. A pastor has the priestly function of interceding for the people before God

 

6. Wisdom Vs Information:

Because of our constant online connectivity we are having an uninterrupted flow of information. Today we live in our ‘Information Junkyards’. As pastors, how do we take this flow of information to ourselves? Too much of unprocessed information confuses the brain regularly and that confusion leads us to insensitivity, inaction or procrastination. Today so many of our Pastors are badly affected by this procrastination and inaction. Keeping on storing all the Junk and doing minimum things to reflect on it, the information is not making us wise and good pastors. We get wisdom by the ‘Interpretation of’ and ‘Reflection on’ the available information. This reflection and interpretation motivate us to proper action. But for the proper reflection and interpretation of the information, every day we require some leisure, time of silence and quietness. That’s why today, there is a greater necessity of having daily quiet time in Pastor’s life. Look at Jesus. Jesus acquired information during day time and late in the night or early in the morning, He just moved away from everything and reflected upon all that information (Matt 14: 22-23, Luke 5: 15-16). He communed with His heavenly Father. Turning towards silence & spending quiet time was His way to figure out how to deal with the demands of His life and ministry. Social Media can tell us what is trendy, what is popular, what is happening now, but that will not provide us a space to think of why it is happening and how that matters to our life.

 

7. Unifying Ministry in an Altered World

Global Network is not only affecting us individually, but also the world around us. Church is getting altered and also the faith communities. We can notice more and more disturbances and alienations among the people in the churches and communities. So what is the Pastor’s role here as a unifying figure?

 

• Interpreters of Memories:

For any community the memories are very important and they keep the community intact. For the onward movement of a community those memories have to be kept alive by recreation and reinterpretation. For example, we say in the liturgy of the Holy Qurbana: “Lord, we remember your death…”

 

There are two types of memories:

 

1. Conceptual Memory
2. Perceptual Memory

 

Conceptual Memories are born from the “Whole Being Participation” in a particular experience and then this memory is kept alive by the recreation and reinterpretation of the same experience consistently. By keeping such memory alive, the process helps us to build a value system of a community. And ‘the Faith & Value System’ of such a community shapes the identity of that community and keeps the community intact. A simple example is our Holy Communion Service. Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me until I come.” At one point of History the Whole Jewish community participated in the experience of freedom from the Egyptian Slavery. Later the memory of that experience was kept alive by the celebration of Passover. As a gathered community, every year they recreated & reinterpreted the whole experience of the Passover. And that recreation and reinterpretation gave them their Faith & Value System and kept them together. Similarly through Last Supper (Holy Qurbana), the Christ experience is recreated and reinterpreted.

 

But the perceptual memory is created only by auditory & visual exposure. The best examples of perceptual memory are pictures and videos. Today, through Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram and the like, we are trying to create perceptual memory of certain events. And knowingly or unknowingly that is happening on the expense and replacement of our Conceptual Memory. For a Faith Community this is something dangerous and scary. A perceptual memory of our community is cherished, as it is more recent & more closely connected to our lives. But it won’t directly strengthen our Faith & Value system. And if this trend goes on, it endangers the integrity of our community.

 

As pastors we are responsible to keep alive the conceptual memories of our church. And we have to think of how we are going to recreate and reinterpret the foundational experience of our church consistently and to maintain a strong Faith & Value System. Through this effort, we attempt to keep our church unified.

 

• Pastors as Motivators:

Christian Communities always made it sure that its spirituality is manifested in her rigorous actions. (James 2: 14 – 26). Church is called out to be a witnessing and serving community. This movement was carried forward by the intentional and consistent commitment of all faithful members. It is very personal as well as very influential in the community life. This type of activism is tough and demands a very deep commitment. But today, slowly this activism is getting replaced by ‘Slacktivism’. Slacktivism means action performed via internet in support of a cause, requiring less time and personal involvement e.g. signing an online petition, joining a campaign group on a social media website or completing a challenge like Ice bucket challenge – making a video of an event and posting it on website. Slacktivism can only give us a pseudo sense of involvement and satisfaction. Facebook & Twitter can start a movement but it cannot generate a sustained change. Therefore, the challenge in front of the Pastors is, “How do we motivate the Church to a visible Rigorous Activism and lead the members to a consistent deep commitment for a cause?”

 

• Guardians of Faith:

As a church, it’s very important for our existence to keep on reviewing from time to time, “What is our faith & value system?” As the church is always open to the world, there are chances of wrong beliefs getting into the Church life (Matthew 7: 15). A constant exposure to the online world is changing the landscape and mindset of the people in a very substantial way. They cultivate choices that are cheap & convenient. People want things to be different, easy and painless. And this is bringing in new belief systems in churches. Now God is seen as a mere provider of human desires. The moderns expect the worship to be emotionally satisfying and soothing. They expect the sermons to boost their egos positively. People have got so accustomed to the online market, catering to their personal interests. They have started evaluating the Church on the basis of online market’s criteria. People have started coming and going in search of a church that satisfies their needs and lines up with their conveniences as we do usually in online shopping.  Churchgoers have now become the ‘Church shoppers’. The end result is that “Church is getting reduced to a commodity.” And when the church is reduced to a commodity, its belief system & style of worship become its advertisement to attract the consumers. In such a situation there is always a pressure on the pastors to make the Faith System more attractive. The idea of God today preached within much of the modern churches is much distorted.  In one of such scenario, during World War II, Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned of the dangers of cheap & convenient grace. He wrote, “Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline and communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without cross, and grace without Jesus Christ living and incarnate.”  God’s words are very clear that our ways are not God’s ways. A pastor is ordained to reveal the nature and will of God to the people of his time.

 

8. Unifying Pastors:

Church is a faith community that gathers for regular worship. Therefore, Church has a beautiful web of relationships. (1 Corinthians 12: 12 – 26). We are so deeply connected that our unity with God and each other is of existential necessity as the family of God. Unity is possible only if there are relationships that sustain it. And maintaining such relationships within a community is always a pastoral challenge.  All the social networks also come up as a way of building strong relationships. The Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp and all other Social networks for more than a decade now have created personal groups. “All the social networks can be a good tool to start a relationship or catch up with a friend or to restart a lost relationship, but they cannot replace our real sustained relationships.” That is the difference between church fellowship and online fellowship. The uses of all these media for the desired relationships have further disintegrated our real human world. If Church is the body of Christ and Christ is head, then we become members of His body, unified to complement each other and to serve.

 

 

Conclusion:

The constant tug of electronic inputs never allows us to be clear and focused. We are hyper connected but easily distracted; always available but rarely present. As unifying Pastors, there are certain things we have to seriously take note of:

 

1. The digital technology is making us impatient & impulsive and it doesn’t tolerate any possible delays. According to Kosuke Koyama, Jesus Christ was a ‘Three mile an Hour God’. Pastors have the role to exhort the people in the digital world to slow down, create pauses in one’s busy life, spend quality time with dear ones in sharing and relating, there by valuing togetherness in life.
2. Digital technology connects us to long lost friends. But it also enables us to avoid people. It can become our hiding place. For God, all are God’s children so is for the pastor. When the digital world is bringing global outlook in every turn, pastors should not be ignoring the local community and at the same time not forgetting the global moves. Shepherds should live with the smell of the sheep and know the green pastures. They are expected to focus on bringing in more global aspects to their local community.
3. Technology is so strong that we feel we must be always available, by being always connected to the particular task. Technology demands our attention. Result is our absence from the rest of the world and from the fine characteristics of human life. A pastor’s ministry is unifying and not alienating any group of people. He is called to minister to all.
4. Technology is so passionate about certain things that we rarely question the wisdom of its content. As pastors, we emphasize the values of the Kingdom of God. In the Kingdom of God, we care for other members by sharing the God-given resources. When we identify the needs of the people, we send care packages to them using modern technology. This is possible by pooling the human resources and packing provisions according to their need. Here human touch is important and we grow in unity.
5. Technology is so compelling that we even place electronic devices into our children’s hands at earlier ages and not the Holy Bible. We train our kids ‘to look down on electronic gadgets than look up for the Divine Power.’ Pastors unite people to study the Holy Bible together, recognize the Go-between-God (Holy Spirit) and practice fasting and prayer to discern the will and power of Almighty God.

 

Pastors cannot ignore the digital world or avoid using electronic gadgets. Pastors are called to understand the epistemic (knowledge) and cultural shift brought by the existing Global Network. With all the electronic equipments on our table or in our pockets, we need to ask the question, how far are these making us better pastors, and more engaged in the given ministry? Christian faith, values and practices have to be reoriented in the modern cosmopolitan culture. All pastors are called to extend ‘the Love, Beauty and Grace of the Divine’ to all kinds of people around us and the wider world. While fragmentation and disintegration are taking place in our global and local world, pastors are to bring the ministry of integration through prayer, worship, mission and witness. As pastors we are called to be creative and innovative to tend to the flock through new mission models and bring them closer to the Kingdom of God. To that end, we, as servants of the Lord of the Church, need to plow and plant. The digital world will know the pastors by their fruit. Mt. 7:20

        

 

 

Navi Mumbai                                                                         Mar Theodosius Episcopa

June 1, 2017                                                                           Diocese of Mumbai

Mar Thoma Church