If you’ve not figured from our Retweets of the Week series, Twitter can be a veritable treasure trove of content. One of the more recent tweets to come across the brow was a link to an article talking about Conan O’Brien’s reinvention using the “new” technologies of the Internet (Facebook, YouTube, branding, etc.) versus the “old media” (print reach, TV, radio, etc.) that he was well versed and quite successful in.

What stuck out (besides the writing) was the quote noted at the end of the Fortune article:

Then O’Brien thinks it through like a digital-media guy. “Ten years ago, if my situation with NBC had unfolded, none of this would have happened. Yeah, maybe I was 10 years too late to do The Tonight Show that I wanted to do,” he says. “But I was just in the nick of time. Do you know what I mean?”

Due to his situation with NBC, he had to react differently. Taking the route that he was used to wasn’t an option – that is, if he wanted to continue doing what he is doing.

Can the church afford to not be similar? Can any religious group?

Yes, there’s a notable difference in the way that some leaders interact with tech and the way their communities interact with it (not digital immigrant versus native, a different kind of divide that’s not fully understood or researched). It is a matter of shift – the kind of shift that happens every few generations that drastically alters how we continue living.

I won’t yet take the position that the digital transformations happening endear themselves to larger changes happening to faith cultures (there is a parallel happening) – but I will say that its no longer a time to sit on any sideline and say that you won’t engage. We have to be cognisant of the levels of relationship the Spirit encourages (Acts 1:8) without letting passions for one type overrun the rest (tweet).

And so we are challenged. Not just to become digitally savy, but to refine how we interact with one another in light of church/faith character no longer being “broadcast the message and wait for the results.” Similar to how Conan and others have found with performing, we need to understand that ministering also means engaging.

Engaging is beyond just making a website, establishing just another broadcast channel, and simulating interactivity with SMS and Facebook. It is becoming an active participant within the lives of people who do and don’t make a distinction between virtual relationships and offline ones. Its becoming a voice mediating the struggles people have when their contexts, and brokering the gaps with the same passion that is usually reserved for “being political” to maintain a presence. Its being instead of posturing. All with the results of an infusinon of faith on a level that is altogether familiar, and altogether bent towards the paradigm of life that people live now.

So what are you waiting for? Or rather, what has your faith community stopped waiting for from you and decided to find in another space?