In a recent online discussion, someone mentioned to me the idea that Christianity goes through a five hundred year trend of re-evaluation and remodeling. I was asked if I thought we might be at one of those once in every five-hundred year events. I’ve often wondered how close we are to another American Great Awakening. The Great Awakenings happen much more frequently.

It is interesting that this has come up in an online discussion, something that didn’t exist during the reformation or the early Great Awakenings. Many of my media oriented friends often talk about the Gutenberg Press as bringing about great changes in terms of education, politics, and religion. Is the Internet bringing about a similar change?

Much of my political involvement has been focused around online activities. The communities I belong to are often around common interests shared online and not around common geography. Yet our church structure is still seems to be primarily oriented around common geography. At the same time, people are looking at how to get Christianity out of the church building and more into the community. How does this relate to the church community being online?

The stuff we post online is much more permanent and searchable that the comments we make face to face or write in letters. If you know where to look, you can find stuff I posted online back in 1982. Recently, a friend died of cancer. I had met him through an online group back in the 90s, and people in the group are still connected online. They are sharing memories and pointing to photos that were shared back in the 90s.

In two different online religious groups, people have asked that personal information either not be shared, or shared with the smallest amount of personal information necessary.

Now I get some of the desire for privacy. When I started considering more deeply what God is calling me to last spring, I was hesitant to talk publicly about it. Part of it was that it seemed God was calling me to a much more intimate relationship, and we are often restrained in talking about intimacy, especially when there is uncertainty about the relationship and vulnerability. Yet at the same time, as we become more sure of the relationship, we proclaim it boldly. I think of my friends posting life events on Facebook, a new relationship, the engagement ring, the marriage, the birth of a child. As I write this, I think of the song we sang in youth group years ago, “I’ll shout it from the mountain top, I want the world to know, the Lord of Love has come to me, I want to pass it on.”

I think of some of the meditations I’ve been reading recently, about our experience of God’s Incarnation, God’s love, God’s presence, happens in the simple parts of life, like appreciating the sunrise on the daily commute, or the kind words of a coworker at the office. How do we experience the presence of God online?

Likewise, I get the idea of telling one’s own story, and not someone else’s story. Yet when we think of our self as part of a community, part of the body of Christ, the line between my story and our story blurs.

When I get into discussions about acceptable behavior online, I often go back to Mark Prensky’s article Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. He was writing in the context of education, but I like to think of it more broadly. In the context of this post, I have to wonder what a church of Digital Natives looks like.

Are the people who are more hesitant to share online digital immigrants? Are they the older folks regularly attending churches as opposed to the millennials who have by and large abandoned church? What might a church of the twenty first century, organized around online interests instead of geographical proximity look like?

I’m also interested in how all of this relates to addressing stigmas, confessing sin, and several other topics. I hope to be exploring some of these ideas in more detail over the coming months.