There are a great many times when, as a pastor, I feel lonely.  It’s a sense that stems from a repeated sense that I live on a different planet from people who really want to do ministry with me.  The sense of being divided from these in language and thought-process leaves me feeling like an alien in the wider Church. Sometimes, it gets to me and I feel genuinely depressed.

Actually, it happens a lot in the fall as ministries gear up for the coming year.  Everyone has a great idea for some project or mission, and everyone needs support, and it seems that everyone one of the ministries sends dead-tree mail to the pastor who is supposed to find a person or persons to fill the need.  The number of dead-tree mailings I get in a given month is staggering, and completely ineffective.  Let me explain why.

First, I don’t communicate in dead-tree format.  It’s simply not the medium I work with.  In fact, I print so rarely that I’m not even sure that the printer in my office works any more.  While I adore books in dead-tree format, my brain goes numb when it’s forces to read form-letters from people I have no relationship with (most of whom seem to think we’re best buds).  Dead tree correspondance is skimmed, and shredded.

Second, there is no ability for conversational exchange with dead-tree correspondance, at least not in the ways I’m accustomed to.  With dead-tree correspondance I need to call a number, during office hours, and listen to someone on the other end of the phone who is typically pretending that they have a clue where I’m from or who I am.  I don’t appreciate this.  In digital exchanges I reply at my convenience, and the original sender responds at their convenience – this makes sense to me, and it’s typically fast.  If you add the benefits of digital exchange through social network structures, both parties have the ability to explore some of the web of relationships which led to an exchange.  This makes me, as an introvert, a heck of a lot more comfortable interacting.

Third, dead-tree correspondance is limited to a single point of contact – usually the pastor.  For the information to get from a source to people in the congregation the correspondance must be read, distilled into something simply communicated, and then posted elsewhere where it is read and then further distilled by the congregants as part of the clutter of a bulletin-board or Sunday bulletin.  If the original message is for a sub-sect of a congregation (such as a board) then the information sits idle until that group again comes together.  Not only is this inefficient, the data completely loses it’s context along the way.  This means, by the time the information is disseminated, the information loses any hope of creating a sense of connection with the source of the data.  Even if the chosen point of contact (such as the pastor) feels a sense of connection to the information found in dead-tree correspondance, it’s becoming increasingly true that others won’t.  People simply do not distribute information this way anymore.  Even the people who attempt to distribute information to churches via dead-tree format don’t use the format in the vast majority of their communication!

So, I feel like an alien.  I get letters in the mail demanding my time an attention immediately, for tasks I didn’t agree to shoulder. If I feel that perhaps someone else would like to shoulder those (typically noble) tasks, then I need to hang on to the dead-tree form letter until the next time I see that person or persons.  In the mean-time, things often just get lost in the shuffle.  Even if dead-tree letters are passed on, the secondary recipient (who also didn’t request the information) frequently loses the dead-tree letter.  As I don’t function well in the ministry context of dead-tree letters and dead-tree urgency, I end up feeling like I’m not doing “my job.”  It’s depressing.

Now, I understand that I need to minister in the context in which I live.  If the vast majority of people are continuing to communicate effectively via the dead-tree form letter format, then I need to suck it up and be more flexible.  The thing is, people aren’t effectively communicating through dead-tree form letters, and haven’t for decades.  Local ministeriums, service-organizations, congregations, and denominations all note how people just aren’t responding to the calls they put out anymore – but they keep trying to communicate the same way.  Even when these groups shift to digital distribution they typically assume that the single point of contact model translates into the digital world.  As such, the dead-tree mentality of a one-way message, sent to a few people, is imported – and fails badly.  What worse, in the past when I’ve pushed to have groups I belong to take up a digital distribution model I’ve been told, “But those people aren’t in our churches.”  Well, that’s right, and at this rate they may never be in our churches.  When is the “right” time to shift our communications focus, anyway?

What would make me happy?  To see our ministeriums, congregations, denominations, and service organizations using distributed and interactive communication – so that people can connect with groups in ways that lead to opportunities for ministry and service.  This may look chaotic to dead-tree communicators (after all there is not “traffic-cop” regulating the flow of data), but it’s also more natural.  If several people in a congregation are drawn to interact with a ministry (be it local, regional, national, or global) then that common appeal become apparent through the interaction and can begin to work together.  Pastors can offer guidance and/or wisdom (if they have any to give), but are freed from the burden of constantly being responsible for everything as the only contact that’s getting incoming information.  This makes sense to me, it would certainly be more effective than sending out dead-tree form letters.