God meets Geek
You wouldn’t have expected me to find a connection between Internet World at Earls Court and Evensong at St Bride’s, Fleet Steet would you? And yet a connection was thrown right into my lap, courtesy of one of the more thoughtful and accessible sermons I’ve heard in church for a long time.
So it’s Tuesday afternoon and I’m at a particularly dry and commercially- orientated exhibition/conference called Internet World on everything that’s (not especially) cutting edge. Unsurprisingly, “Web 2.0″ is bandied around a lot; some daredevils are even talking about “Web 3.0″. Whoa!
Few of these talks were especially inspiring but both Giles Colbourne and James Hilton gave audiences plenty to ponder about the mobile web user experience and how mobile phones can be your friend when considering different marketing approaches.
I’m particularly interested in mobile web and mobile marketing so this is good.
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“We’re all marketors and PR people in the Church” preached Canon Meara at St Bride’s service for the Worshipful Company of Marketors (which = marketers/marketeers to you and me. No idea what that particular spelling is all about).
Teenagers, he said, are found to be the demographic least likely to give to charity (or to give the least). Except. Except if you target them by SMS i.e. allow them to donate via text message – at which point they become extremely generous! I’d like to see the research that backs this up, but it’s nothing short of fascinating (albeit not entirely surprising), providing some real-world evidence to the theory I’d been hearing all afternoon.
Didn’t expect it to be provided by a church sermon but life’s full of surprises.
He went on to say that the church should take leads from the business world about how to use technology to sell ‘services’ provided by the church. I’d agree — and they can start with improving their website. But snipes apart, it’s true. If the Church could only catch up with the technological age (and I’m sure some have) they could broaden the appeal to precisely those people (e.g. teenagers) for whom it holds none.
The second connection of the day was a less savoury one. Internet World was a sharp contrast to the sort of grass-roots, hippy web stuff I usually subscribe to which is more “let’s use the web to make a the world a better place” or at least “let’s make the web a better place” and much less “how can the web make me rich!“.
It’s sometimes a bit difficult to stomach the hypocrisy of the anti-material teachings of Anglican clergy, preaching to middle class congregations in buildings that boast opulence and choirs whose extraordinarily high standards (vis a vis St Bride’s) almost literally scream at you: we’ve got money, we’ve got money!
The same people who go to Anglican churches and cathedrals in this country are also the literati of the country, are also the high earners and if we accept this guff about ‘money is the root of all evil’ we are surely hypocrites.
I prefer the view, hinted at on Tuesday and (another coincidence) at Norwich Cathedral last Sunday, that whilst modern life makes it extremely difficult not to pursue material and financial gain, church reminds us that our lives have a spiritual dimension too; if for only one hour a week we spend some time reflecting on how to be better people – that’s a good start.
Here ends the sermon.
