Posts Tagged ‘social networking’

 

Mission, Marketing and Media—Inseparable, Invaluable (Part 3)

Posted on: February 10th, 2014 by Hayim Herring

 

Welcome to the third in a series of guest bloggers from my friends and colleagues — all experts in their respective fields. As I wrote last week, these three words — mission, marketing and media — can begin to sound like empty buzzwords unless they are clearly defined and then made actionable for congregations. The content of what they mean is easy. The key is in understanding the context. Rounding out the series, I’m delighted that my friend and colleague Rabbi Jason Miller, President of Access Computer Technology and all-around rabbinic entrepreneur, is this week’s guest blogger. He provides real-world examples of what happens when the bricks and mortar of a congregation meet the bytes and clicks of the digital age, and why social media channels for engaging people are not optional, but integral to congregational work.

 

“The Social Networking Synagogue of the 21st Century”
Rabbi Jason Miller – Access Computer Technology

 

Rabbi Jason Miller of Detroit, MichiganAsk a typical Jewish man or woman if they belong to a synagogue and you’re likely to hear, “Yes, but we only attend on the High Holidays.” Nothing new there. We all know the twice-a-year Jews who only show up in the pews on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, just as we all know Christians who only appear in church on Christmas and Easter. However, something has changed as of late.

 

That same individual who once described their synagogue attendance in such sporadic terms might now explain that she is an active member of the congregation. Has she all of a sudden begun attending the bricks and mortar synagogue building any more than she did in the past? No. So what has changed that her answer is so vastly different? She now finds herself engaging with her congregational community in Cyberspace. She is a fan of the congregation’s Facebook page and while she was able to ignore those monthly event flyers that arrived in her mailbox on various colors of copy paper, she now sees each program the congregation offers in her Facebook feed (which she spends an hour a day on average reading!). As she’s following the lives of her friends and family, she’s also tracking the weekly happenings at the synagogue. She can see which friends are attending classes, she is learning from the rabbi who posts some thoughts on the weekly Torah portion, and she closely scrutinizes the photos that were uploaded from the last Sisterhood function (which she didn’t attend in real time, but she now feels as if she was there).

 

That same individual who felt so out of touch with his congregation because he only engaged the services of the rabbi a few times in the month leading up to his daughter’s bat mitzvah is now subscribed to the congregation’s weekly Constant Contact newsletter. He knows which congregants passed away, whose children became engaged, and who just became grandparents for the first time. He can now keep up with what his children are learning in the religious school because he follows the education director’s tweets during the school hours (wow, he thinks, this is way more interesting than my Hebrew School experience!). He learned from uploaded photos on Instagram that there is a monthly study session just for men at the local pub led by the rabbi and he already added the next month’s session to his calendar.

 

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A Preliminary Theology of Social Networks

Posted on: January 2nd, 2013 by Hayim Herring
A Preliminary Theology of Social Networks

photo from: Master isolated images, freedigitalphotos.net

One of my findings from  interviews with rabbis that I conducted for my book, Tomorrow’s Synagogue Today,was  their lack of specific, intentional connections between their personal theology and their congregation’s organizational structure. I asked them how their personal theology influenced their congregational governance, how they worked with volunteers and similar types of issues that are often labeled as the “business” or “administrative” side of congregational life. This lack of conscious connection really didn’t surprise me because structural issues and theology don’t naturally mix. They require a leader to constantly work at making those connections and creating patterns of organizational behaviors that are infused both with spirituality and effectiveness at getting work done.  And it’s difficult for rabbis who are juggling many balls to reflect on how their theology can amplify their work on the structural side of congregational or Jewish organizational life.

As people like Beth Kanter and Allison Fine made clear in their book, The Networked Nonprofit, networks are the new form of organizational structure in the 21st-century. (Actually, Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps predicted in 1994 in The Age of the Network that networks would be the signature form of organizations in this century and I wrote about network organizations for the Jewish community in 2001 in Network Judaism). The bedrock of social networking sites, the platforms that support network organizations, is relationships. Social networking sites enable many different levels and types of relationships. They allow people who know one another well to remain in closer touch, permit people who know one another casually to deepen relationships and facilitate brand new relationships. They encourage people who share common interests to collaborate in sharing resources and solving problems. Social networks are blind to issues of socioeconomic class, race, gender, sexual orientation, levels of education, professional titles – and the list goes on. In theory, social networks give individuals an equal voice regardless of difference and they enable people to transcend national boundaries.

Networks are really beginning to reach their potential to reshape organizations, so now is the time to ask, “What role can a theology of networks play in our awareness of synagogues and Jewish organizations?”

As I reread the first chapter of Rabbi Art Green’s most recent book, Radical Judaism, I began to glimpse what a Jewish theology of social networks could be like. Green, one of today’s most original contemporary theologians, describes himself as a neo-Hasidic Jew and a religious humanist.

On page 18 of his book, he writes:

My theological position is that of a mystical panentheist, one who believes that God is present throughout all of existence, that Being or Y-H-W-H underlies and unifies all that is…’Transcendence’… (in this context) means rather that God-or Being-is so fully present in the here and now of each moment that we could not possibly grasp the depth of the presence…There is no ultimately duality here, no “God and the world,” no “God, world, and self,” only one Being and its many faces…There is no end to its unimaginable depth, but so too there is no border, no limit, departing that unfathomable One from anything that is. Infinite Being in every instant flows through all finite beings…”

And again on p. 29, he writes,

Every creature and every life form is a garbing of divine presence. The way in which we treat them and relate to them is the ultimate testing ground of our own religious consciousness….The purpose of our growing awareness is to reach out and appreciate all things for what they really are. This is especially true with regard to our fellow humans.”

Without meaning to reduce Green’s deep theological thought, he makes the case that the same One underlying unity is within each of us. That awareness is precisely what social networking can reinforce within congregations because networks have the potential to span significant differences. I wonder what the experience of being a part of a congregation would be like if rabbis maintained a vigilant awareness that God’s presence was actually pulsing through all aspects of the congregation and that the current structures and organizational divisions that characterize congregations actually conceal their inter-connectedness and make the parts less than the sum of the whole. Social networking as an organizing concept can enable participants in a congregational community to connect with one another, to share, to learn, to solve complex problems and to see the possibility of each part of a system contributing to a transcendent whole. And if that is not a manifestation of the divine, I don’t know what is.

I understand that social networking has a very dark side to it as well. My point is not to argue the benefits and the detriments of this relatively new way of organizing. Rather, it’s to encourage rabbis and Jewish theologians to bring our theological beliefs to this new form of organizing. Compartmentalizing our beliefs from one aspect of organizational life diminishes the overall power of that organization to have a deeper impact. And that is especially true of congregations.

These are some preliminary thoughts about a Jewish theology of networking.I realize that they are a little amorphous and preliminary. So I’m asking you: what other theological stances do you bring or aspire to bring to congregational life so that belief can animate the structures of your congregation in a way that nourishes them?

cross-posted at ejewishphilanthropy.com