Digital Church conference rescheduled for February

By Verity A. Jones

The public, free one-day conference at Union Theological Seminary in New York—Digital Church: Theology and New Media—has been rescheduled for Friday, February 8, 2013. The conference will showcase the work of the New Media Project over the last two years and invite new conversation about thinking theologically about new media and social media in the context of ministry today.

We hope you will join us, especially if you are in the New York or Northeastern areas.

We’ll begin with several guests from our case studies— Eugene Cho of Quest Church in Seattle, Tony Lee of Community of Hope AME Church near Washington, D.C., Eric Elnes of Community Christian Church UCC and Darkwood Brew, Susie Shaefer of the Young Clergy Women Project, and Nadia Bolz-Weber of House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver.

Next, our own New Media Research Fellows will respond and in the afternoon present the theological essays that grew out of the case studies and conversations with the pastors and leaders of those sites. We hope to demonstrate how we’ve been thinking theologically about the changing patterns and tools of communication, and spur more thinking in the church and the academy on these important topics.

Union Theological Seminary president, Serene Jones, will then respond to the Research Fellow presentations. Her scholarly perspective on the questions will help move the conversation forward.

Finally, our case study guests will end with the day with their last thoughts on all that has been shared.

The New Media Project, which is funded by a generous grant from Lilly Endowment Inc., was hosted by Union Theological Seminary from 2010 to 2012. Now beginning its second phase, the project has recently moved from Union to the Center for Pastoral Excellence at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, Indiana. We are exceedingly grateful to Union for their partnership in launching this project and are pleased to host this transitioning conference in New York in February.

The event is free and open to the public, but we do ask you to register. Hope to see you there.

Verity A. Jones is the executive director of the Center for Pastoral Excellence at Christian Theological Seminary, Indianapolis, and project director of the New Media Project which is now part of this new Center.

The New Media Project is a research project helping religious leaders become theologically savvy about technology. To request permission to repost this content, please contact newmediaproject@cts.edu.