Aaron Flores is blogging about an article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about Christians who are videoblogging (you may need to register to access the article - I did, but it looks like you might be able to reach it without registering by going through the front page).
About a week ago, I was contacted via email by the author of the article asking for my perspective on videoblogging. I guess he had found this site through an earlier article I had written about vlogging (another name for videoblogging). Some of what I wrote back to the author ended up in the article, but Aaron had something valuable to say in response to something I had said which was quoted in the Journal Sentinel article.
My portion:
If the church could catch a vision for using video technology to present an authentic presentation of the life of the church - not rehearsed videos, but spontaneous records of conversations, laughing with one another, weeping with one another, people sharing their lives, etc. - the average person might take notice,” Frank Johnson wrote in an e-mail interview.
Aaron’s response:
The key is that spontaneous conversations and showing life should not be a strategy to proselytize / evangelize. The videos then become suspicious to the viewer as religious propaganda. It must be natural to the community sharing their life. They must be as open, sharing, and accepting as what they portray online. If anyone meets me in real life they know that I am just as open, sharing, and accepting of others (some say too open and sharing). It would be a shame to share the life of the community in a positive light online, but in real life the community is nothing like its online presence. Also, weeping with one another and showing the gritty side of sharing life with each other is so important.
Aaron’s right - authenticity is so important and what we do online should not reflect something different than what we are in real life.
I believe that the internet provides today's church with a historic opportunity .... to tell the old, old story of Jesus and His love in ways which could only have been imagined in times past. The objective of this website is to explore the various ways in which today's technology can be used to spread the gospel around the world.
