Bishop Alan Wilson wrote last week for the Church Times about how Internet social media offer an irresistible opportunity to spread the gospel. The Church should plunge in.
This article is now available without subscription (though not indefinitely so) at Blogging for the world.
Mrs Partington lived at Sidmouth on the seafront. The Revd Sydney Smith records her gallantry with a mop and pail during the great storm of 1813: “The Atlantic was roused; Mrs. Partington’s spirit was up. But I need not tell you that the contest was unequal; the Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington.”
Confronted by a new wave of communications technologies, some Christians will reach for the mop and pail. Others will just keep calm and carry on. A few will go sailing, seeing the Atlantic as the way to a new world.
New media are the greatest quantum leap in communications since the invention of printing. Networked computers are now connecting and reconnecting people all over the world in radical new ways…
Bishop Alan is right – about the need for the Church to take seriously the challenge of present-day means of communication. Perhaps the reason more C.of E. bishops don’t blog, is that their words would be recorded for posterity – something many of them might not be too pleased about. After all, one is instructed in the gospels that one’s Yes ought to mean Yes, and one’s No, No. In other words there ought be no equivocation. No room for turnarounds!
“No room for turnarounds!”
Surely, Ron, even for bishops there must be room for metanoia.