The Missions Community
In the Global Village

After this introduction, I will go over a brief glossary of terms, attempt to give you a perspective on information technology that is critical and aware, and then focus on why you as missionaries should care about the Information Environment, and why and how you as missionaries should adopt and use certain aspects of it as a means to accomplishing your mission. I will also try to give a glimpse of what headquarters (both DFM and General Council) are doing in these areas. (Throughout this document, a link like this: [TOP] will bring you back to the table of contents.)

My goal is that you will understand the information environment and adopt certain technologies, but that you will at the same time feel a tremendous sense of responsibility to use them carefully, critically, and with due regard to the side effects of these technologies. I don’t want you to leave this presentation saying, “oh, I’m going to start using e-mail” as easily as you would change your socks; I want you to realize the side-effects of such a decision, including changing the way you work and eventually changing the way you think and therefore who you are, and to consider the ramifications of becoming someone slightly different, in some sense a “citizen of cyberspace,” when “who you are” is the incarnational context for the gospel message you share.

I’m trying to work through, for myself, some of the ramifications to missions of what I see happening in technology and communications. For instance, in a world where the very fabric of communication tends to squash heirarchy, what is the role and relevance of a place called “headquarters”?

In a world where the very fabric of communication tends to make geography increasingly irrelevant, how should we, a division defined by geography, react?

In a world where I have more in common with (and more communication with) a college professor in Bulgaria or a computer programmer in India than the gangster rapper a few blocks a way in Springfield, what is the meaning of “foreign” missions? What about the meaning of “indigenous” in a context where the geopolitical underpinnings of “indigenous to whom” are chaotic? Should we be looking for a successor to the indigenous church principal?

And in a world where every pastor wants to have his own missions philosophy and send out short-term teams; in a world where the “receiving” nations are sending their own missionaries who desperately need to learn from mistakes we made 75 years ago and at the same time desperately need to be independent from us, how can these technologies be harnessed to build consensus, a sense of community, and a truly global partnership in mission?

Again, these are questions I’m struggling with, and I don’t propose to answer them all in this session. I do propose to raise them, and to challenge you to a critical awareness so that questions relevant to your field will be raised over time as you see the influence of information technology on the missions force, the missions field, and missions philosophy and practice

• E-Mail (Electronic Mail)
• Network
• An internet
• The Internet
• The Information Superhighway
• A Place to Stand
• Marshall McLuhan

E-Mail (Electronic Mail)

Messages sent from one computer to another by electronic means, usually in several jumps involving many other computers along the way. The pathway can include telephone, high speed digital coax or fiber links, or even radio and satellite links. E-Mail does not require permanent links between all the computers involved. (The user usually sees only his connection to his e-mail provider; the rest of the infrastructure is not of concern to him.)

Network

A network is a group of computers that are connected together (with direct wire or fiber links, or by phone line via modem). A LAN (Local Area Network) connecting 50 personal computers on the desks of workers in an insurance company is an example of a network.

An internet

An internet, short for "internetwork of networks," is a group of networks connected together. Just as a bunch of computers connected together is a network, a bunch of networks connected together is an internet. If the insurance company in the previous example has a home office in several states and a LAN in each home office the company can be said to have multiple networks. If they then connect all these different LANs together, they have created an internet (lower-case "i").

The Internet

The Internet (specific term, upper-case "I") is a particular network of networks that ties together many major university computing systems, major military and industrial research locations, high-tech companies, and many other entities that are being added so quickly that the Internet itself begins to defy description. The Internet was originally built by the federal government as a means to share information among military, defense-related researchers.

Today it is becoming a culture all its own, with a folklore all its own. It is usually what is meant by "cyberspace" or "the net," though these terms are purposely ambiguous enough to include non-Internet computing that is somehow related to the Internet (such as CompuServe or other almost-Internet online services).

The Information Superhighway

The Information Superhighway (or Infobahn) is a metaphor and a proposal. The metaphor refers to the interstate highway system, provided by tax dollars so that all can use it for "free" so that it isn't only the rich who benefit from having a good system of roads: it benefits everybody through stimulated commerce, lower cost of transported goods, and making it possible to visit Aunt Martha over a 3-day weekend.

The proposal is for the federal government to get involved in the creation of a national information infrastructure, mandating cooperation among telephone companies and cable operators to provide the "data freeways" that link data sources with data consumers. It may or may not eventually mean that every home is entitled to connect to some subset of available services for a government-regulated fee. It probably will be a superset of the existing Internet.

We know that it will link up with infrastructure outside the United States because it will initially be built on the Internet and the Internet already does that. Thus we hear not only about a National Information Infrastructure but a Global Information Infrastructure.

The Infobahn is not the same as the Internet. The Internet is to the Infobahn as Cary Tidwell is to School of Missions: an important part that drives the whole, but not anything like the whole in and of itself.

You may remember Marshall McLuhan as the guy who said, content is irrelevant; “the medium is the message.” He was also fond of saying, “To the blind, all things are sudden,” and “Media are new environments as imperceptible as water to a fish.” My purpose in reminding you of his ideas today is similar to his in using these quips: I want to make you aware of what you’re swimming in, so that the changes you will be facing will not surprise you.

Communication channels aren’t neutral: they have strengths, weaknesses, and (especially) side-effects.

McLuhan’s theory revolves around his insight that our communications technologies are more than just tools, even more than metaphors of our time, but actually define and shape us, changing the way we think.

McLuhan’s approach was to try to look at the attributes of a specific medium and predict how using that medium would change us as a society. For instance, by 1967, before there was a generation who had grown up with television, he predicted that the effects of television on such a generation would include all the following:

1. a desire for instant gratification;
2. an emphasis on personal experience and a de-emphasis on acceptance of responsibility;
3. the decline of organized religion and the rise of experience-centered, doctrine-free connectedness to spirituality (what we now call “new age religion”);
4. the breakdown of ethical systems as they fail to keep up with and guide the use of "media" (technology).

Note that these predictions weren’t made based on the content of what was being shown on TV in the 1960s -- for McLuhan, content was irrelevant. He based these predictions on the attributes of the TV technology itself and the way cooperating with those attributes would change TV viewers.

McLuhan also predicted that side-effects of modern communications technology, including computer-mediated communication, would include the following (as quoted from Counter-Blast (1969)):

"Acceleration of information movement can have, as one of its consequences, a multiplicity of jobs for everybody. Joblessness as the consequence of automation may well mean the end of the single job for the single lifetime, and the switchover to a multiplicity of jobs for every lifetime." (p. 28)

"In the Age of Information, media . . . are in themselves new natural resources increasing the wealth of the community. In the Age of Information, the moving of information is by many times the largest business in the world." (p. 37)

"At the present time America is shaping every phase of Russian life and policy by virtue of technological ascendancy." (p. 56)

There is more in this book about Russia, communism, and the eventual outcome of the cold war; anyone interested enough can judge for himself whether McLuhan predicted in 1969 what the rest of us began to see in the mid-1980s. What is interesting for our purposes is McLuhan’s insight, based solely on his observations of the side effects of technology, of Russia’s complete domination by the American technological economy, as early as the mid-1960s.

One more quote for good measure, because it so accurately describes the current rush to commercialize the Internet and create the Information Superhypeway: “The wild broncos of technological culture have yet to find their busters or masters. They have found only their P.T. Barnums.” (p. 54)

Now I ask you again not to swallow McLuhan whole or to accept his view uncritically, but to consider whether it is possible that he really did what he claimed to do: predict long-term effects on society which would occur as a natural result of adopting communications technologies with certain attributes and side-effects. And further, to consider where current technology may push us, not only as a society, but in the context of world missions. [TOP]

Information technology will change you.

Either you will adopt these technologies, or you will reject them. Adopting them will change the way you work and the way you view the world. Rejecting them will change you just as radically, potentially even putting you out of step with your supporters and the aspirations of your audience. Look at TV as an example: some men have tried to harness it for evangelistic use, others have spent their whole lives and ministries preaching against it. But nobody has been untouched by it.

Information technology has changed (and will continue to change) your support base.

I believe a book could be written on this topic. I will make two brief statements that seem to me to be simple and self-evident, but at the same time full of potential ramifications for missionaries:

1. In a world where it is increasingly possible, convenient, and inexpensive for missionaries to be in regular contact via e-mail with their supporters, supporters’ expectations of the amount of contact, communication, ongoing relationship, and real partnership increase accordingly.
   
2. While it would be foolish to try to cut pastors out of the loop, it is now increasingly possible to network directly with missions-motivated lay people. Like other gatekeepers, pastors’ ability to control access of people to information (and vice versa) is eroding.

Information technology has changed the world.

The world you were called to isn’t there anymore. The souls are still there, but the cultures and sociological groupings have changed. Expectations have changed. Cultures have changed. Religious openness has changed.

One consequence of the shrinking planet is that geography is becoming less relevant in defining people-groups, lifestyles, even language groups. I regularly have electronic conversations with people oceans away, but I almost never see or talk to my next-door neighbors. And it is not only Americans for whom this is becoming true. Everywhere in the world it happens, access to media images and the consequent ability to compare lifestyles across geopolitical boundaries is shaking the old order. The concept of a people-group is changing from a geographic and ethno-linguistic “given” to a self-selected reference group.

The information environment has also changed the rules of effective use of power. There are many kinds of power. One of the most misused kinds of power is the power of authority. When we have authority to do something, we rarely attempt to cultivate other kinds of power, even though other approaches would be better in the long run [for the simple reason that power is an attribute of a relationship and the relationship is often more important in the long run than the short-term goal we exercise power to achieve]. Authority is quick and easy: if you have it, you can use it immediately. Other kinds of power take longer to use: the power of persuasion; the agenda-setting power of communication; the power of information; the power of integrity; the power of knowledge, of wisdom, of building a consensus. Communications technologies coming into mass use today have the side effect of flattening heirarchies and undermining authority. This is frightening to those who use authority as their principal means of achieving their goals--and not without reason. But it ought not to worry those who know how to build networks, consensus, and movements among autonomous districts, autonomous churches, autonomous pastors, and entrepreneurial missionaries.

The necessary technology and infrastructure is in place for one-world government and one-world economy. Things in Revelation that were once thought to be figurative can now be literally accomplished with existing technology. Digital cash, smart cards, microchip implants, instantaneous communications, all are here today. (Added in jest: If Bill Gates weren’t such a harmless nerd, people would be pointing to him as a potential candidate to become the anti-Christ. He has the technology, and the money, to pull it off. )

Most dramatically, the current information environment directly impacts the tools you have available to you. It represents the opportunity for creation of a “virtual missions community” about which more will be said in the next section.

The age of learning a living. Continuous self-teaching is a basic survival skill necessitated by the rate of change in every sector. It is also the age of readily available resources for self-teaching; the Internet itself is perhaps the best example of these self-teaching resources. [TOP]

It is too late to be frightened or disgusted, to greet the unseen with a sneer. Ordinary life-work demands that we harness and subordinate the media to human ends. (p. 53)

It allows us to be part of a missions community anywhere we are.

If community is no longer geography-bound, we can be part of a missions community whereever we are. We really do need each other. This is a scriptural principal as well as a very practical one. I hope you have lived and worked with an awareness of a need--and a responsibility--to communicate with headquarters personnel, area directors, supporters, and networks of coworkers. None of us is as smart, as talented, or as well-informed, as a team of us working together. I hope we don’t fear the interdependence of true teamwork.

What am I talking about here when I speak of missions community? Imagine the best parts of School of Missions -- all the friendships and conversations that develop in hallways and dorm rooms and across tables in the dining commons -- continuing on throughout your term on the field regardless of where you are. Imagine checking your e-mail and finding, on a regular or even daily basis, personal notes from friends both on the field and at home -- personal notes that will actually keep coming because you will actually answer them because it is so cheap and easy to do so. Imagine further finding e-mail messages containing the text of an ongoing round-table discussion with peers and coworkers on issues of interest to you; reading the material and knowing the others who are reading it also, how they are likely to react, and knowing that you can choose to reply or just wait and see how the conversation develops. Imagine being part of several such groups, one large including many missionaries and supporters back home, another made up of missionaries just from your area, and others that may not be related to work at all but to expanding your knowledge and expertise in some area of personal interest. Unless you have participated in an electronic discussion group, you may not be able to appreciate the sense of community it can foster.

The sense of community would be worthwhile if that was the only benefit, but that is just the beginning. The real power is not the “feeling” of community, but what can be accomplished by the community, working as large and small networks of like-minded people who pull together because they want to and choose to and are interested and motivated to do so. I believe there is more potential for missions in these grass-roots networks than in everything else missions has adopted out of management textbooks over the last three decades.

It is easy to tool up for easier/cheaper/faster basic communication.

The good news is that the possibility of a global missions community is now more convenient and affordable than ever before. Very few parts of the world are still beyond the reach of the basic infrastructure necessary for the least common denominator of the Information Superhighway, electronic mail.

The Net as evangelistic medium.

The possibilities afforded by the Infobahn as an evangelistic medium are being explored by many, including our own ICI University. ICI is setting up specific areas for their materials. Comment: don’t spam the net for Jesus (posting religious material in inappropriate contexts).

Meets the need for continuous learning.

Again, I’ll remind you that continuous learning is a survival skill, and there is no better place to learn about the information age and particularly the Internet than on the Internet itself.

Reminder: Communication basics.

Perhaps it would be good to be reminded of a few communication basics in this context:

You cannot not communicate: Refusal to communicate when channels exist is itself a communication.

Every communication has a content part and a relationship part: E-mail especially, since it lacks a lot of nonverbal cues, requires the communicator to specifically address the relationship part of the communication or risk having it read in by the reader based on the lack of relationship cues.

Every communication is to a greater or lesser extent cross-cultural: Cross-cultural communication is not just between you and the nationals on the mission field; it can also be between you and a missionary from another generation, or a supporter from another walk of life, or even a spouse of another gender. All the flexibility and determination necessary in any cross-cultural communication can be needed in any of these situations.

Communication can flow through a variety of channels, but the channels themselves aren’t neutral: We all know that some things must only be said face-to-face. Some channels are much better for creating a sense of community than others. No single channel is best for every purpose. Choosing appropriate channels to match the goals of the communication is part of the responsibility of the communicator. And by all means, Christian communicators must be aware of the side effects of the channels they choose.

It is easy to tool up for easier/cheaper/faster communication.

Relative costs of phone, fax, mail, e-mail

Example: 3 pages to Singapore:

• read aloud via phone, taking 5 minutes: $3.32 + (4*$1.35) = $8.72.
• faxed, taking 3 minutes: $3.32 + (2*$1.35) = $6.02
• mailed, first class, est. one ounce, taking approx. 1 week = $1.00
• e-mailed, < $.10

Additional advantages of e-mail

• Like fax, it eliminates phone tag and makes time zone differences less relevant as a hindrance to communication
• it is more convenient than fax for computer-generated text, though it doesn’t handle hard copy and non-text as readily (requires scanning as a separate step)
• it can be encrypted for complete privacy
• it can be cryptographically signed for complete authentication
• it can be digitally compressed for even greater savings
• it can be used to send any kind of digit