GlennFrazier.com

As I mentioned yesterday, I've been reading The Long Tail and thinking about its implications for the church. Between going to bed and falling asleep, I decided to do a blog series on just that.

So what I'm going to do is blog through the book, chapter by chapter. I'll be posting a very short synopsis of each chapter, accompanied by my thoughts and reactions and questions and musings. In general, I'm looking to find answers—or at least have conversations around—the following questions:

• What implications does the Long Tail phenomenon have for religion and spirituality in general?
• What lessons can the individual church congregation take from all this?
• What about whole denominations? Entire religions?
• What can an individual do to take advantage of the lessons learned here on behalf of their church?
• What are the special implications for new/unusual/niche expressions of faith, such as New (Swedenborgian) Christianity?
• What does this all imply with regard to online ministry?
• How can we benefit as content providers?
• As content aggregators?
• As information "consumers"?
• How do we fit our new understanding of Long Tail distributions into the concept of Divine Providence?

I'm posting this now, but my plan is to wait a bit before putting up the first chapter post. I'd like to invite you to get a copy of the book to read or listen to so you can follow along and participate. Even if you aren't reading the book along with us, though, feel free to participate in the conversation, whether by posting comments here or writing in your own blog or emailing me privately or whatever.

I'm not doing this because I'm an expert in the topic, but because I want to tap other people's perspectives on this new and exciting way of looking at how people trade value and information with one another.

If you missed yesterday's post, go back and scroll to the bottom for a list of resources that will help you learn more about this book, where to get it, where it came from, and what it says.

UPDATE: I have decided to also offer this series as a podcast. I'm also hoping to include interviews with various knowledgeable people, but we'll see. Click here to hear this post's audio, and click here to subscribe to the special Church and the Long Tail podcast.

Posted by Mac at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, I just got back in town (Pittsburgh) after spending the weekend out east (Philadelphia). I—along with wife and all four kids—drove out to Bryn Athyn, PA to witness two good friends graduate and then be ordained as priests of the New Church.

Godwin Zatay-Agboga and Ekow Eshun both entered theological school the same year I did. I graduated a year early becuase I took the compressed three-year schedule while they took the standard four-year path. We took the same classes, but not always at the same time. Still, for most of our time at the Academy of the New Church Theological School, we were interacting with each other one way or another.

Both Godwin and Eshun are remarkable men. Each became New Christians by their own paths, in their native Ghana, many years ago. They studied the Word and our religion's theology before coming over to the states for formal training, and in my opinion arrived knowing more about it all than many others who in the past have come into the Theological School after four years at Bryn Athyn College of the New Church. (That's not a strike against the College but a testament to their training in Ghana.)

Anyway, this past Saturday they each graduated, having completed the Master of Divinity (MDiv) program, and on Sunday they were ordained. Not long from now they will both be going back to Ghana to bring New Christianity to all who can benefit from it in their home country.

It was a priviledge and a pleasure to go to school with them, and I am blessed and excited to now call them my brother ministers.

I am also very happy to be home. It's over five hours each direction (almost exactly 300 miles each way), and, while I loved seeing family and friends, as well as the graduation and ordination ceremonies, I am now very worn out and happy to not be sleeping in a strange bed tonight.

Oh, and one other fun part of the trip. My wife and I got to listen to about two thirds of the unabridged audio of The Long Tail. This amazing book has major implications for online (and even traditional) churches that we are exploring as we go through it. Perhaps more on that later. For now, I need to eat dinner. If you don't know about the long tail, here are some links:

• Read an early essay version of it from Wired
• Look it up in Wikipedia
• Buy it on Amazon
• Download it via iTunes
• Visit the author's blog

Posted by Mac at 7:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Er...do blogs have saddles?

Anyway, I've decided to get back into personal blogging again. For awhile, the only blogging I've done has been sermons and sermon summaries, with an occasional theological paper. My focus has been more on audio podcasting of sermons, and all that action has been going on over at my other blog (TheoBlog.com) and at my local church's website (PittsburghNewChurch.org).

But I want to get back into "real" blogging again. Why? Partly because I think it's good for me. Partly becuase I think it'd be good for my church. Partly because I think somebody out there might enjoy having me back on line again.

It'll be different, though. Before, I was focused almost exclusively on politics and policy. Sure, it was fun getting linked to from time to time by Best of the Web, being contacted by inner-circle types in Washington D.C., doing web radio interviews with pro-democracy anti-Iranian theocracy groups, participating in blog bursts and all that. It was useful, fun, exhilerating, and a boost to the ego.

But I'm a minister, now, and I worry about my political opinionating getting in the way of my spiritual calling. First of all, I don't want people to feel like they can't approach me because of my politics. I love everybody, and I try to love everybody else. (Heh.) My religion informs my opinions on government and society, not the other way around. In this hotly divided political era, in which people scream hatred at one another over ridiculous things, like who is in the White House, I worry that even tacitly connecting my political opinions to my name will cut off 50% of the world from being able to approach me on a spirtual, pastoral level.

Also, I want to be very careful to not let anyone make the mistake of thinking my personal opinions are also the opinions of the General Church of the New Jerusalem, the Pittsburgh New Church, or, for that matter, of God Himself. I'm not making that claim. My opinions are my own, and are guaranteed only to have error and uncertainty mixed in with them and to sincerely be my own.

There's also the time thing. The height of my blogging came during my semi-retirement between leaving active work at my company (Refinery, Inc.) and my beginning training for the priesthood of the New Church. I had more time on my hands, then, and if I'm going to pick it up again now, it will have to be in a way that serves—rather than competes with—my ministry.

Also, I worry about my role as confidant. What I would really like to do is offer a totally candid, sincere, unguarded, open, transparent accounting of my thoughts, feelings and actions. (Or at least of the interesting ones.) But I absolutely cannot have people always wondering when they talk with me, "Is he blogging this?" So at least some level of guarded abstraction seems unavoidable.

I'm also looking for general guidance from others on how to live out loud online while faithfully doing my job as a minister. I'm looking for advice from you, if you've got it. Those that know me can email me. Strangers are welcome to post comments below.

A related puzzle is what to do with my two seperate blogs, TheoBlog.com and GlennFrazier.com. How do they relate? My current whim is to keep GlennFrazier.com as is and use it as my "main" blog, and to rebrand TheoBlog as something else, rolling it into a larger web project I have in mind, and using it solely for "official" communications, like formal articles, sermons, podcast sermons and shows, and the like. But then again, maybe it's weird and confusing to have two blogs going at the same time. I don't know.

What do you think?

Posted by Mac at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)