Fleet Parish Blog

A Statement in support of our Archbishop, Dr Rowan Williams
(Read out in All Saints Church, by The Vicar, Revd Roy Woodhams, on Sunday 10th February):

I believe that our Archbishop has been the subject very unfair criticism this week, and there are three things that I would like to point out to you:

1. He has been maliciously misquoted by the press reports of what he actually said this week. If you look at the full text of his lecture which (which can opened with the following link: http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/1581 ) you will understand this.

2. Religious extremism is borne out of marginalisation! A bee will only sting when it feels that its life is under threat. Most wild animals will only attack when they have been cornered. And so it is with religious extremism - throughout history, we have seen examples of religious groups who have been cornered into impossible situations, and so have turned to violence as a last resort!

3. As Christians living in Britain, we have to accept that we are no longer necessarily the majority religion or culture. But it is our responsibility, as Christians living in a multicultural society, to make this country a place where all are valued, welcomed and supported in whatever beliefs they have. And if that means working towards incorporating the laws of other faiths and cultures into British Law, then so be it.

Within all of that, I would like it to be known that Dr Rowan Williams has my full support and backing as he seeks to lead our Church through difficult times!

As I write this at Pentecost it seems an appropriate time to consider the new ways we can communicate our Parish message in this day and age. Two thousand years ago the disciples must have been having a bit of an anticlimax after the Ascension. What do they do now? Leaderless, the disciples were gathered - may be the very same room where only a few weeks before they had been been for the Last Supper. The tremenduous happening is very well described in Acts 2:1-4:

And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.

And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.

And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.

And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

Some say the miracle was just that they spoke Greek, the lingua franca of the western Mediterranean, which would have been understood by all the visitors in Jerusalem for the feast. But what ever it was, the big step was that they were driven to get out and communicate, and they had something to say.The “wonderweb” is providing an increasing number of ways that everyone can broadcast to the world, or to anyone who wants to listen. First there was email,  corresponding with your friends for free, then the website, everyone can have a shop window to the world. In the last few years the pace has quickened and evolved (perhaps intelligent design?) and so many new internet features have appeared together that some call it WEB two-point-zero - the next release of the web.Going beyond emails :

• Instant messaging (communicate with your teenagers for free!)
• phone over the internet
• videoconference over the internet (last month I chatted with my nephew who showed me the spare room in his flat in Buenos Aires - no wardrobes yet!)

but the exciting areas are new broadcasting and collaboration methods:

• Blogs - web logs or diaries (like this) where you can share your thoughts with the world, and others can discuss and reply (below)
• chatrooms - where you can chat with like minded people
• Online communities - somehow unpopulated and unintelligable to anyone over the age of 25: like Myspace and Bebo 
• and the connected file sharing like YouTube where you can load up video to play to the world.
• Wikis - like wikipedia ; an encylopedia just built by voluntry contributions with a bit of peer editing. I quickly found all you ever need to know on Pentecost at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentecost
• the search engines - including Google : the mother of all - have gone beyond just finding text to providing maps, pictures, tailored news, best shopping prices, free email, even free software.
• Newsfeeds (Real Simple Syndication or RSS) where you can build up your own news agency by taking feeds from your choice of providers to get the information you want. (see http://www.parishoffleet.org.uk/newsfeeds.html for an example) You can even receive feeds from Blogs of your choice or the discussion and comments (see the foot of this page)
• Podcasts where you can download recordings -  audio and video - to play when you want, not just on your computer but on the ubiquitous iPod (hence the name)

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

All these take the web beyond static websites, centrally controlled, into an interactive forum. Not just broadcasting but a cyber-soap box where others can heckle back or discuss and add to the thoughts. And the big plus for non-commercial users is that all of web 2.0 is largely free. In a few minutes you can broadcast a video to the world (the puppies that arrived in our house this week were on Youtube in 24 hours http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB2Z-9Ms1_c ). Some of this is paid for by advertising, others run by internet media giants like Google and Yahoo as part of thier global communities, or you can get them at no extra cost as part of a webhosting package.And if you feel that the central websites might have some hidden agenda, or you just want a more specialised site, then the technology is relatively cheap and accessible. Find the the peer group review in Wikipedia is too liberal and anti-christian biased? Then set up http://www.conservapedia.com/Main_Page. Are some of the videos on YouTube a bit “off message”? then there is http://www.godtube.com/With this explosion of communications where does this leave the poor Parish website?Should we try to keep up with Web 2.0 ?Should we stick to doing the website as well as we can?If we struggle to fill the website, why look for more ways to communicate?If we have an interactive forum or chat facilities how do we moderate the discussion to make sure it doenst get hijacked by others?Should we podcast the sermon? BBC NEWS | UK | England | Suffolk | Vicar stunned by sermon surfers http://www.feedforall.com/podcasting-sermons.htm www.preachtheword.co.uk/Should the vicar blog his sermon - and we can then discuss the points raised in a way that you never can, even if you stay for coffee after the service?If we podcast and blog who will listen? By the time we have recorded or typed out the sermon will it be worth the effort? (Someone once calculated that so few people listened to the epilogue on Radio 3 that it would be cheaper to turn off the transmitters and send the announcer round to the listeners house by taxi!)Will we have enough to say in a blog that would draw people back to read the next one?Should we just be aiming at people in the geographic confines of our parish boundaries or going for the global audience?Do we risk having a divided seperate online community, inaccessible to the “bricks and mortar” church-goers, perhaps struggling to even turn a PC on? Do we begin to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gives us utterance?   Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.