Practicing Faith in a New Media Landscape
Always On
(Baker Academic, 2019)
WHO: Angela Williams Gorrell is assistant professor of practical theology at George W. Truett Theological Seminary, Baylor University, in Waco, Texas.
SHE SAYS: “If you want to be attentive to what is impacting people’s lives, critical and theological reflection on new media development and engagement is essential.”
THE BIG IDEA: This book provides useful tools to help us understand the world of social media and engage it faithfully, constructively and pastorally.
THE PROGRESSION:
In Chapter 1, “Interested Conversation,” the author provides questions to help churches reflect on new media’s possibilities and its brokenness. Chapter 2, “Traversing the New Media Terrain,” defines “new media,” examining what that term encompasses.
Chapter 3, “Shaping Stories,” examines the cultural stories we share. The next chapter, “Online Jesus,” is an invitation to imagine Jesus’ life and ministry in order to articulate how a representative of Christ’s kingdom would act and feel online.
Chapter 5, “The Convergence,” describes several processes of discernment while Chapter 6, “Glorious Possibilities,” wraps the book up with numerous ways to develop hybrid Christian practices and has an outline for designing a rule for life in a new media landscape.
“I am inviting Christian communities to encourage members to be invested in thinking critically and theologically about how they will use new media, in being open to God’s invitations in our new media landscape, and in regularly examining how God has been present to them in the midst of their hybrid lives.”
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