The Concreteness of Community

If you are reading this post then, like me, you probably have at least a moderate interest in the blogosphere.

I think blogging, and social networking, and twittering, and e-mail, all have their virtues. For starters, it has put a lot of us in touch with one another in ways that never could have been possible a few years ago. And for those of us in the church, it has given us avenues to pursue our personal discipleship as well as church renewal through media that weren't available to any previous generation.

But there are downsides. I wrote not long ago about what I believe is the digital age's negative influence on the loss of interpersonal etiquette - the most basic expression of hospitality. And in conversations I had with Shane Raynor in preparation for a column on his reappearance in the blogosphere through the Wesley Report, Shane was careful to point out that these spaces we inhabit in cyberspace should be used "to supplement real community, not replace it."

The limits of online community were shown to me in spades late last year when John the (formerly) Methodist (once of Locusts & Honey and now of the Zeray Gazette) announced to the world that he was renouncing his Christian faith. This came on the heels of a terribly negative experience with the ordination process in his annual conference, so bad in fact that he described his exit from the UMC as an "escape" from a "cult."

I read with regret as John related his disgust with the church and those in it in post after post over the following weeks.

And suddenly I realized how seductive cyberspace could be.

I mean, here was a guy whose blog had been one of my favorites for years. He was funny, he (like me) loved Star Trek, he did this "Art Blogging" thing that I thought was one of the most creative uses of a blog I had ever seen, and he seemed utterly unafraid to raise controversial issues and then invite open discussion of them. Heck, he even featured me on one of his Methodist Blogger Profiles.

But I didn't really know John. And by that I mean that I didn't know him at all. My "relationship" with him was like my relationship with most of you who are reading this post: it existed in the ether, where the Internet fairies carry all of our messages and posts and tweets to one another and we conjure up the fantasy that we are actually a part of each other's lives.

So how do you love your neighbor when you've never met him?

The experiences John went through are deeply personal ones, of course, but he also made them public by sharing them in a blogging medium that is viewable by the whole world. But the ironic thing to me about the blogosphere is simply this: the whole world can have a conversation together here, but not a single one of us can offer the bread of Eucharist to another.

I'm in a mood to write about this because of a post I read by John Meunier last night called, "Methoblogging for good and ill." It is a remarkable piece of writing, and I encourage you to read it. John reminds us that Christian community must always, finally, be concrete.

This thing we do in cyberspace has opened new avenues for connection with one another, but we can't let it delude us into thinking we've got something more than we do.