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The Use of Technology Broadens the Access to the
2009 General Assembly

Note: this two-year-old essay will be updated shortly based the 2011 General Assembly.

By Bill Anderton***

small_rose_window_200w.pngWe Disciples meet every other year in General Assembly. The vast majority of all of our churches in the country are represented and we're all together for five days. It is a wonderful and exciting event to be able to attend akin to a family reunion. I have immensely enjoyed going in the past.

Last week, we held our 2009 General Assembly in Indianapolis, the home of our General Ministry.

I was not able to attend this year. My TeleWorship ministry was busy supporting several Disciples ministries who were either launching new websites at Assembly or were posting special projects to their websites every day of the event or were making near-real time reports from the activities at Assembly. I needed to remain in Dallas to lead our editorial and engineering teams.

Although I was not able to attend physically, I was at my workstation all week, sitting in front of my computer for the entire Assembly (an artifact of being a professional geek). Even though I was in Dallas, I was still able to be at Assembly in Indianapolis, virtually, though the use of a number of technologies used at the event. Some of these technologies were used in Assembly for the first time:

  • Live video for the opening session and the worship services each night. After each live session, the resulting video was also made available for replay.
  • Real-time chat that was displayed under the video where remote viewers form around the country could chat and engage.
  • News feeds from disciples.org and DisciplesWorld.
  • Tweets posted on Twitter.
  • Posts and updates to the social networks.
  • First-person reports sent from clergy and laity of the Southwest Region.

Much of this information was collected and made available in near-real time on the Southwest Region’s website and some of the Area Ministry and church websites in the CCSW. Displaying dynamic feeds from General Assembly were:

During the five-day course of General Assembly, Wednesday through Sunday, almost seven thousand unique visitors who were NOT attending Assembly in person visited our websites from just the six sites listed above (I don't have an estimate on the larger international audience from all of the various Disciples websites). Our visitors were not only able to keep up with what was going on but they were also able to experience at least a part of Assembly, to join in the celebration. Some were laity, church members who had never attended an Assembly before. Some were church staff who were not able to attend this year for various reasons. And, yes, some were even strangers, not members of any of our churches, who just happened to stumble into the sites or came seeking something and stayed to watch and read for a while.

The live and recorded video provided by the General Ministry was obviously a big hit. I only wish there was more of it and more sessions were covered.

The news feeds on the websites were updated dynamically and helped us keep up with the official news from assembly and the personal first-person reports from the Regional staff who were on-site at Assembly were a blessing.

However, the biggest surprise was the Twitter postings made throughout Assembly. DisciplesWorld reported that 50 to 60 Disciples tweeted throughout the event. I don’t have an official count of the number of tweets that were posted but I have read one claim that approximately 1,000 messages were send to the #ccdoc hashtag alone during event.

Some of the impact of these tweets surprised even me and I am a regular Twitter user. I usually tweet in a stand-alone environment; my tweets are the only message presented to the viewer. However, at Assembly, because of the multiple information vectors that were provided, all of the media (videos, news feeds, reports and tweets) combined synergistically to provide a very rich experience despite being virtual. I was able to watch the live video and read the live chat and the tweets at the same time. This provided a better, more-nuanced experience for those of us who were not physically in the Indianapolis Convention Center.

When live video wasn't available, people were tweeting live from the Assembly floor in the business sessions or workshops (via wireless-equipped notebooks or cell phones). They not only kept us up to date but also provided commentary and some of the flavor of the debate on all sides. New tweets came in every few seconds and you were almost compelled to stay glued to the screen reading as the story unfolded.

Special thanks should go to Rev. Charlotte Hoppe, Area Minister and President of the Tres Rios Area of the Southwest Region who tweeted regularly and often to keep us informed. We got a “Southwestern” take on much of General Assembly. Her tweets were not only rich with information but also provided the personal nuance that helped to make tweeting real to our visitors.

Realizing that it was important to keep our churches and congregants in the Region not only informed about General Assembly but to also let them get at least part of the experience, we used the RSS feed from Charlotte’s tweets to update the home page of the Tres Rios Area website every 60 seconds. People from all over the regional could see her Twitter postings almost as they occurred.

Similarly, I posted the discussion of the #ccdoc hashtag group to the regional website.

Feeding the tweets to our websites was part of our plan to broaden the coverage of General Assembly for our Region, particularly to those people who would not otherwise use Twitter or the other social networks. Many of our people had never seen Twitter before but they were still able to follow and enjoy the postings through our websites.

As cool as the use of the technology was, there is a deeper lesson to be learned here. As part of our transformation process at the local church level, we're re-connecting with the basic concept of turning our focus from only inside of the church to be outward-facing and engaging again. Church and evangelism isn't just what goes on inside the walls of our building with other believers; it is also outside and off-campus, in the community were we connect with our neighbors. As a church, we are better off for getting back to this basic truth.

I suggest that refocusing General Assembly to also be a more outward-facing experience is equally healthy.

General Assembly is important for conducting the business of our ministries and our polity requires it. In a larger, more important context, General Assembly is also always a wonderful experience for our clergy and church leaders to attend to reconnect with our greater church family. It is great to make or renew friendships with other Disciples, learn together, pray together and worship together; to become inspired and take that enrichment back home.

We rightly assume that most of the attendees will be clergy and senior church leaders. Indeed, the "physical" General Assembly is very much a church clergy and leader event. However, the "virtual" General Assembly is something much broader where we a great potential to connect with those "outside our walls" and a much larger audience of congregants, communities and neighbors.

Wouldn't it be wonderful and wouldn't we have better churches if our congregants and our neighbors could join into the experience as well and benefit from a similar enrichment? The more visible we make the General Assembly, the broader we spread the experience, the better off we will be.

Also, the General Assembly is something that needs to be shared beyond ourselves. We’re a very diverse multi-cultural multi-ethnic church filled with many differing opinions and we don’t always agree. However, to paraphrase Rev. Dani Loving Cartwright's report from Assembly, “we had honest and respectful discussions that were not contentious or difficult or uncomfortable. It was brothers and sisters in Christ having serious conversation about serious issues! THIS IS WHAT WE ARE CALLED TO DO AND TO BE!  … such a wonderful example of being church!”

In a highly-polarized, only-birds-of-a-feather, my-way-or-the-highway society, isn’t this a witness and an example that we want to take into the larger community outside of our walls?

Yes, taking the week off and going personally to General Assembly to be physically present and immersed in all of it would be best. However, if we can't be there, attending virtually was the next best thing. Even though I couldn't attend this year and anchored in Dallas, I actually participated in the event, albeit via technology, and was better off for the experience.

No, we’re not fully where we need to be with the use of technology to spread our witness but this year’s General Assembly of a solid step in the right direction. I eagerly anticipate the next General Assembly in 2011 confident that we will further broaden the accessibility of the experience.

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Contact Bill Anderton by clicking here. Your comments are invited! Interesting comments, both pro and con, will be posted and/or commented upon in future updates.

*** Bill Anderton is the Immediate Past President of the Board of Directors of Central Christian Church and has led our Technology Ministry since the founding of this ministry. He is also the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Scientist of TeleWorship Corporation, a ministry that provides “technology in the service of ministry.”

You can follow Bill’s tweets where he posts regularly about our Technology Ministry at http://twitter.com/bill_anderton or from his Twitter badge on this site at http://www.cccdt.org/pages/bills_twitter_badge.

To see Bill's latest project for the Church, see www.transformingthechurch.org. TransformingTheChurch.org provides best-practices in transformation through online learning and consultation processes; resources that churches can use. TransformingTheChurch.org tweets at http://twitter.com/ChurchTransform