The Presbytery of Twitter: Introduction

(This is the introduction to a book I am writing. It is a very rough draft, so please share your honest comments and questions.)

In September of 2011, I started an Internet project called “The Presbytery of Twitter,” or @PresbyTwit as it is known to its followers. Born on a whim and with very low expectations, my venture was described on its profile as “an experimental, not-so-serious body of online believers.” This description has turned out to be quite ironic. As I begin to write this book, the Presbytery of Twitter has attracted more than 400 church professionals from a variety of positions and denominations for discussions on some of the most practical and challenging topics of the day.

The idea arose during an ordinary conversation on Twitter with a ministry colleague known as @jazzpastord. I had just returned from a meeting of the Presbytery of the Peaks in Farmville, a sleepy town in southern Virginia about an hour from my home in Clarksville. A presbytery is a regional governing body of Presbyterian churches that meets three or four times a year.

@revjimmoss Once again, returning from presbytery filled with frustration.

@jazzpastord What is so frustrating?

@revjimmoss We just sit there, listening to endless committee reports, or arguing about the latest hot-button issue.

@jazzpastord You don’t think those things are important?

@revjimmoss I do. But I wish we could do more.

@jazzpastord Like what?

@revjimmoss I don’t know. But I almost never come home with something practical to help me in my church.

@jazzpastord Then stop complaining and do something about it.

The conversation was cut short by my ringing phone, and when I returned to my laptop, @jazzpastord was gone – apparently called away by a real world demand of her own. But the damage was done. Her challenge to be the change I wanted to see struck a deep chord.

That night, as I lay in bed, my frustrations swirled around in my brain. I thought about how much of what we do in the institutional church is hopelessly anachronistic. As Chapter 1 describes, the current model of how we organize meetings and make decisions is suited perfectly for the needs of the 19th-century church, when travel was slow and the only option for communication was the US Postal Service. In the Internet age, using this model is like a CPA refusing to buy a computer and continuing to operate on the old ledger system.

But inefficiency wasn’t my real complaint. As I had told @jazzpastord, I was longing for something practical to take home for my congregational ministry. Occasionally, a useful morsel falls from the table of committee reports and contentious debates. Normally, however, the best conversation occurs in small groups during breaks and at lunch – which is what I realized that night as I recalled the meeting in Farmville and my subsequent griping on Twitter.

Many presbyteries have begun to understand this dynamic and now intentionally structure small-group discussion into their meetings. In chapter 2, I will contend that such efforts are a good start, but fail to address the deeper needs that online communities are beginning to meet. Using my experience with The Presbytery of Twitter, and the fascinating stories of Virtuous Abbey and the 1st Presbyterian Church of Second Life, I will show how the Internet offers some tantalizing possibilities for fellowship and mutual support that traditional gatherings cannot.

In chapter 3, I will go a step further and explore the idea that formal church bodies could organize and operate exclusively in the online world. Using the new Presbyterian Book of Order as well as the constitutional documents of other denominations, I will raise questions about the polity and practicality of making the jump to virtual church.

On that fateful September night, however, I had not yet followed the train that far down the tracks. When the idea first entered my brain, it was nothing more than a desire to create online what I wished I could find at an actual presbytery meeting. That is where I got the notion to call it a presbytery – a rather strange notion, since all that I had in mind was a fellowship group with more structured conversations than are normally found on Twitter. But I have become convinced that naming the group as if it were a church governing body is what has allowed it to be successful.

The next morning, when I logged onto Twitter and created the @PresbyTwit account, I invited about 30 colleagues that I either knew personally or had met on Twitter. @jazzpastord was the first to leave a comment, making the statement that this was “the first non-geographic presbytery.”

I’m still not sure if she was being serious, but the comment dislodged something in my mind. Suddenly, I began to see The Presbytery of Twitter as potentially more than a discussion group. I envisioned a new reality in the way the church organizes itself, as if a body with actual ecclesiastical authority could form itself through social media. Congregations have already been formed online. That is nothing new. But I wondered if anyone had ever tried to start something like a virtual presbytery – a body that governs and supports a group of congregations, agencies, schools, and church professionals.

In chapter 4, I will give a brief overview of how church organization has evolved since the first disciples of Jesus were called together. Throughout its history, new forms of church have sprung forth unexpectedly in response to an ever-changing world. Then, I will argue that not only does the 21st century church have the opportunity to organize in a radically new way on the Internet – but that it must do so in order to thrive and survive.

But again, on the day The Presbytery of Twitter was born, I was not thinking such expansive thoughts. I was merely trying to get my friends excited about joining me in this experiment. After 24 hours, I was thrilled that 27 of them had followed @PresbyTwit. Buoyed by the “first non-geographic presbytery” designation, I logged on for the second day determined to make the experience as much like a real presbytery meeting as possible. Naturally, I assumed the role of moderator.

Without even making a conscious decision, I began to operate under Robert's Rules of Order, with a few modifications. Someone could make a motion. If that motion was seconded, there would be a time for discussion and then a vote. The difference came in the timing.

In a physical meeting space, everyone has the chance to hear and respond to comments in an immediate sense. It is the role of the moderator to determine when the discussion is complete (or for someone to call the question). Twitter, however, is a medium where people come and go with quite a bit of inconsistency. Some users seem to live on the site, with tweets appearing throughout the day. Others might check in just once a day. In chapter 5, I will explore several ways in which the nature of online communication will necessitate some immediate changes in church practice – including the paradoxical notion that virtual decision-making might require a slower process.

I proposed a 24-hour window for discussion of a motion, followed by a 24-hour window for voting. Hearing no objections, I suggested that our first order of business be to create a profile picture. Before long, @MamaTina posted a striking image of the Twitter bird perched on the Presbyterian Church (USA) logo. It was seconded, and we began the 24-hour discussion period. The next morning, by a vote of 15 to 7, we had our first official profile pic – which was later replaced by the current pic (created by @AnwothWill) due to copyright concerns.

By the end of day 3, I was thrilled with both the number of followers – more than 50 – and with the fact that people were buying into the idea. What was developing was something vaguely like a presbytery meeting, but also quite different. There was discussion of church-related topics; there were a lot of ideas and constructive criticism; there was voting; and there were even a few folks who announced that they no longer wished to participate. Most importantly, there was that sense of palpable excitement that comes with exploring new territory.

In chapter 6, I examine the concept of exploration and map-making as a metaphor for church in the 21st-century. This metaphor has already been used for community-based church ministries by authors like Alan Roxburgh, but I will expand it for the shift to the Internet. I will show how this leap is less like exploring new terrain on earth and more like travelling to an entirely new planet, where the bulk of accumalted knowledge is obsolete and most of the rules have changed.

It did not take long for us to realize that running a governing body on Twitter is like travelling to a different planet. After the success of choosing a profile pic, we had an equally easy time coming up with a slogan. @robjacksonIV suggested, “It’s all good in the Presbyhood” – remember, we were trying to be “not-so-serious” - and the vote 24 hours later (on day 4) was nearly unanimous. The discussion of this motion, however, signaled that the process might be short-lived.

Some rumblings began to emerge that I was not strictly following Robert’s Rules. As can happen in an actual meeting, the climate deteriorated quickly. It was all in good fun, but I was amazed at how art began to mirror reality. I found myself, much like an actual moderator, parsing matters of substitute motions and calls for the question. At one point, the conversation resembled a Monty Python skit mocking parliamentary procedure, and I was more than grateful when a motion to abandon Robert’s Rules floated up into the chaos.

When this motion passed near the end of the first week, it represented what I believe to be the most significant moment of the entire experiment. Letting go of the church's long-held standard practice for governing a meeting indicated that we felt free to let go of a lot of other standard practices as well. It also allowed us to stop bickering and start focusing on what has become the core function of The Presbytery of Twitter: great discussions on the challenges facing the 21st century church.

In chapter 7, I will contend that Robert’s Rules of Order are among the many anachronistic practices that the church should reconsider. Not only are these rules unworkable in a format like Twitter, they are not conducive to the consensus-building style of decision-making that is gaining popularity. In an era when commissioners to a presbytery had little contact with one another between meetings, Robert’s Rules ensured that a lot of business could be conducted in a short period of time – a concern which dissolves in the new reality of the Internet.

With Robert’s Rules abandoned, The Presbytery of Twitter adopted the consensus style of decision-making. As we moved into our second week of existence, I challenged the followers – who were now approaching 100 in number – to suggest actions we could take. I had a number of possibilities in mind, such as recruiting new followers, electing officers, and making official communication with other church bodies.

We did arrange for “full communion” with @ekklesiaawesome, another not-so-serious church body that has formed on Twitter, but the experiment had lost the excited edginess of the first week. The followers seemed curious about what I would do next, and I did receive some good advice from some other virtual church pioneers (thank you, @MeredithGould and @mbmccandless). But I was unsuccessfully trying to encourage others to take leadership roles, and no one had any new suggestions for where to go next. I began to think that the Presbytery of Twitter was winding down. If nothing else, it would make for an interesting blog post.

In chapter 8, I will speak to the realities of life on the digital frontier. Rarely do things develop the way we think they should. Patience and humility are the key virtues. As the church steps out into the unknown realm of online organization, we will be relying more intensely on the Holy Spirit and the mystery of its guidance than we have in generations.

If nothing else, this experiment has taught me that the Spirit is in charge. I’d like to say that on that fateful September night, I planned it all out. I’d like to say that I crafted an action plan, set goals for growing the list of followers, and carefully charted out new developments like the Twinterview and the confessional constitution. I’d like to say that each of the wonderful conversations that have brought me laughter, insights, and new friends from all over the world are part of some grand design that I’m slowly unfolding. But I can't.

When I think of The Presbytery of Twitter and how completely unplanned it has been; when I think about how it has grown and what it has come to mean to me and many others; when I think about our followers who have hungered for same type of connection I have hungered for; and when I think about what this little experiment teaches us about the future of the church – I feel amazingly humbled and blessed. Given the circumstances, it could only be the work of the Spirit that has brought about this community and this sense of hope and common purpose.

The final two chapters of this book will look beyond the horizon to where the Internet and social media in particular will take the church in the longer view. Sites like Twitter and Facebook are the current realities, but five years ago, very few people even knew what they are. In another five years, everything is likely to have changed again. There is absolutely no way we can imagine what the reality will be at the end of the 21st century and beyond. Nevertheless, what practices can the church adopt today to make sure that the Spirit continues to move in new and exciting ways?

Confession: I am not at all a computer person. My laptop is the most advanced piece of equipment I own, and I don't even have Internet access in my home - which is why you will rarely find me on Twitter after 5:00 pm. I have even done a fair amount of writing that warns against becoming too dependent on technology. I am the last person that anyone would expect to be an online church pioneer. It seems ridiculous for me to even type those words. But here I am, and here is The Presbytery of Twitter. Praise be to God!

My hope for this book is simple: To share an amazing experience that I have been having; to analyze how this experience speaks to the current reality of the church; and to dream about how we can begin to answer some of the tantalizing questions that are being raised.