Soul Revival Church was thrown into the online space by the COVID-19 crisis. We had to respond and my DA is our digital response. But I haven’t just been thinking about the present during this project. BCM325 has helped me think about the future of church online. I believe that the processes, technology and skills gained from this experience will follow through into life post-COVID. We aim to maintain an online presence to continue to reach those we could not usually reach. Whether it be our viewer in Germany, our friend in Japan or families in Tasmania and Queensland. These are all viewers outside of our church content who we’ve been able to connect with. I know we can continue to do this well into the future.
Feedback about the future. That’s what this has felt like. I found three different beta posts and was able to contribute to their work. Firstly I was led to Elena’s post.
This feedback addressed her concerns about Tik Tok. In her Beta she discussed a slow and difficult growth and reposting UOW users content. My first paragraph addressed her growth concerns. I shared a link that gives advice about how to grow on Tik Tok. I also included a quote from that site. This way Elena doesn’t need to read the full article if she doesn’t want. I took one point from it and shared it for her benefit. I did a similar thing in the second paragraph. I was less explicit in taking from the website (I didn’t quote it) but I took one point about interacting with online users and shared that with Elena in an attempt to…
My tweet quality was strange this time. I was far more proficient at posting tweets with better content and higher quality interaction creation. However, I found myself too focused on this. This meant that my interactions with other tweets were lacklustre at best. Here’s what I did (and didn’t do).
Interactions
I was constantly trying to create interactions with others on twitter. One of my aims was to create discussion. Some tweets were more successful at this than others. Some tweets had zero interactions.Some had only one.
What I noticed was that it wasn’t questions that lead to better interactions. Instead, it’s compelling information or images.
Another way I sought to interact was through sharing fans interactions. I was able to interact with Alita fans by sharing multiple tweets. The one linked above and the one pictured below.
In my video, I draw the connection between cybernetics and a church theory called The shock absorber. This is that theory.
This shock absorber diagram is read from the bottom up. The environmental change here is called Cultural Change.
A Cultural Change hits society. The shock absorber absorbs the shock of this change by asking questions: What is the change? Why did it happen? What does the bible say about that? What is the strategy and practice (the response)? This leads to an equilibrium with young people, culture and the church. The youth respond first and that bleeds into the rest of the church and we get a second church-wide equilibrium.
This is an interesting take on environmental change in the church with a cybernetic perspective. As I say in the video, church is a system that uses feedback from young people interacting with culture to change our strategy and…
I was one of 15 people to retweet Isaac Percy’s tweet during our first screening, Metropolis. I wanted to start with a post from someone else because I think this captured something about this whole experience. I tweet lots. I’m going to share what I learnt and the tweets that taught it to me.
congrats everyone, we are the second highest trending hashtag in Australia right now. we are more famous than coronavirus, but not as famous as a lack of toilet paper #bcm325pic.twitter.com/5EIfoennQ4
We were expected to do 10 tweets and 20 other interactions. I definitely achieved the 20 interactions but the tweeting itself far exceeded 10. 22 tweets for the first film I’m unsure if this is a good thing or not. I’m afraid I may have sacrificed quality for an almost crazed quantity. Despite this here are my Top…
The public utility NOW is that people can participate in church without going to church. This is a necessary need at the moment. Going forward 6 months this will continue despite people being allowed to go to church again. This is so we can continue to share the service we provide with the far more people than we could possibly achieve at a normal gathering. This reaches people who have moved away from our church and want to be connected, it also reaches those who cannot normally attend church and finally it is great for people wanting to check out church but are nervous about actually going.
The feedback over the past 2 weeks has been constant. Not only do we have immediate comments like “You’re all wearing hats” and “That’s a lot of plants” But I’m also getting messages regarding the way we film and what we are producing.
My first comment was on Mandy Cai’s blog. She talked about using the Sims to create floor plans. This blend of architecture and gaming interested me but I wanted to see if I could give her more places other than Reddit to post to. After quite a while (and only one viable discovery) I surrendered to the realisation that she’d probably picked the best place to share her DA. Despite that failure, I was still able to share an article that will hopefully be helpful.
My second comment took less time as I was more familiar with this kind of DA. A video game podcast by Chris Comino. I play video games and run a podcast so I sought to be helpful with that background in mind. Firstly I tried to direct him closer to the subject material by giving him an idea for a podcast episode. I…
