Spirit in Action
Spirit In The Digital Age: Quakers & Technology
In this episode, Spirit in the Digital Age, producer Madeline Schaefer takes a look at the role of technology in spirituality and, specifically, with Quakers. Included are interviews with Martin Kelley about QuakerQuaker.org and the convergent Friends movement; Stephen Dotson and Facebook; Chris Pifer and Aaron Crosman on what makes a Quaker website, "Quaker"; and the diary of a one week "Technology Fast."
- Broadcast on:
- 11 Dec 2011
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our feelings ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeat. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ Wow, what a treat I have today for you for Spirit in Action. If you tuned in for the interviews I did this summer from the Friends General Conference Gathering, you heard a bit from my co-host for some of those interviews, Madeleine Schafer. Madeleine does her own radio programs and podcasts called Friends Speaks My Mind, but she's accepted to fill in periodically for me on my Northern Spirit radio shows. She may be the first to co-produce these programs, but keep in mind that you might be the next co-host of this show. If you are interested in the prospect of producing either Spirit in Action or Song of the Soul, please contact me via the info on nerdinspiritradio.org. Maybe you're called to share your spirit and your piece of the light with our listeners nationwide. Again, Madeleine Schafer produced today's show. So today for Spirit in Action, she'll be sharing a montage called Spirit in the Digital Age, looking at how these new tools impact our spiritual health. While the lessons and insights are, I think universal, Madeleine Schafer has brought in the experience of Quaker she knows, looking at things like doing a week-long technology fast. So many of the subjects are likely applicable to you, whether or not you're connected in any way with Quakers, and they'll all be interesting. One thing I'll note for those of you unfamiliar with Quakers, the official name of Quakers is The Religious Society of Friends. So we are often simply called by the name Friends, and you'll hear that term throughout the interviews. There's no intent to confuse, befuddle, or obfuscate. It's just a term used interchangeably with Quaker. The name Quakers, while perfectly acceptable and positive today, was actually, originally, an insult. Today it's just fine to say either Quakers, or Friends, and Madeleine and her guests will be using both names. Madeleine brings great passion, insight, and talent to her exploration of Spirit, and it's an honor to have her sit in today for me for Spirit in Action. Sorry, I'm just loosing out these tabs and I'm just going to finish up this conversation. Okay. Oh, oh, geez. Oh. Sorry. I'm so sorry. I was just expecting this call, and I should have turned it off. I'm so sorry. Anyway, welcome to Friends Speaks My Mind, Exploring the Soul of Quakerism, I'm Madeleine Shaver. Our lives are filled with noise. Whether that is physical noise or simply thoughts and information that create a kind of mental racket. So all of this modern technology, which is so attractive and is not going away, can naturally create some difficulty for finding that still small voice. How do Quakers deal with the internet and cell phones and iPods and all of our increasing methods for awarding silence? And how are we taking advantage of all of the amazing ways that the internet and other forms of communication can help us connect to one another? I spoke with Martin Kelly, perhaps the most famous Quaker on the internet. He started the blog consortium Quaker Quaker and it's been instrumental in promoting a vibrant online Quaker community. He is a big proponent of using the internet to create dialogue among many different branches of friends. Would you define yourself as a convergent friend? Oh, that's a good question. I mean, I'm definitely sort of, you know, part of this convergent friend's movement, but one of the things I think about convergent friends, it's a misunderstood term a lot of times, but it's also, I think, even more as converging friends, that it's friends being where they are and who they are in terms of theology and social issues who are looking back towards traditional Quaker ideas and trying to figure out how relevant they are to a modern context. So, you know, you might have a liberal who's a convergent friend and that means maybe they're, you know, looking back at like, well, what's this whole Christian root of Quakerism? An evangelical pastoral friend might be thinking more like, well, what's the role of the pastor that traditional friends didn't have that? So, what's the role of the pastor in that? Conservative friends might be looking more at what's, you know, should we be evangelizing and doing more outreach? So, that might be a conservative friend. So, it's not that there's one sort of type of, you know, kind of theology or social position. It's convergent friends. It's sort of more friends from various branches who are kind of curious about the others and curious about the Quaker roots and are there any babies that we've thrown out with the bathwater in our evolution as different types of friends? And so, what is the role of the internet and blogging specifically had in convergent friends? Oh, well, it's been huge. I mean, the nice thing about blogs is that you can just hit Google or check out one of the directories and all of a sudden you're reading someone who normally you wouldn't meet. You're not even necessarily supposed to meet. You know, we're all in our little yearly meetings and even when we travel across the country, we're often finding friends who are just like us and we're having these same sorts of conversations. With blogs, you can have a conversation with someone who's a totally different type of friend and with the internet in general, but blogs especially have been kind of nicer forms. People are more friendly, more open than sort of the open internet sometimes. I sort of had this experience pre-blog. I was very involved with Quaker's United and Publications for a while and they would have meetings all around the world, well, Europe and North America mostly, and people from different types of branches would come together and you'd have these sort of conversations. One of the people who's involved with, as one of the sort of editors of Quaker Quaker is Johann Maurer, who was the general secretary of FUAM. Now he's in Northwest yearly meeting with the evangelical friends and doing a lot of work in Russia as well. And he said the conversations that he's seeing in blogs are like the conversations that we've had at sort of these high-level meetings where people come together from all sorts of different places. It's just that people in their monthly meetings haven't been able to necessarily make these kind of connections. And that was a wise thing when you said that I thought because it's kind of interesting. We get to go reach out and listen in. Part of me, things of the internet is being something that connects people but it's also tremendously distracting and it's just so complex that it's easy to feel like you're just being pulled in a million directions. You can have like seven tabs open and while you're waiting for one thing to load, you can be updating your Facebook status or whatever. But this idea is that all of this information is actually helping us understand the root of spirituality and the root of our religion more deeply. And that's very encouraging. I think that's unique in the way that people approach internet and blogging. I'm also challenging stereotypes. I mean, every type of friend we have, we'll have a story of what are those types of friends and how do they differ from us. Here in Philadelphia, we'll say the pastoral friends that have ministers like, "Oh, well, they just sort of gave up all that Quaker stuff." And they're not really Quakers. That's something it's easy for us to say. We say it on a blog and you're going to get some Quaker pastors who are starting to have comment in and they're going to have some really interesting arguments that you might not have thought about. So we sort of have our stereotypes gently challenged, hopefully gently, and sort of makes us more aware of the sort of thoughtfulness of the compromises that different types of friends have made. And hopefully that makes us sort of grow. It keeps us out of just our little parochialism that we are this type of friend and we don't really exactly even understand the other types of friends. So tell me a little bit about Quaker Quaker and how that started. Really, it evolved. I started personal Quaker blog back in 2000 something or other and there weren't very many blogs around, probably like 2003. There weren't many blogs around and what I was kind of interested in is what would a Quaker blog be as opposed to a blog just written by Quaker. And so I'm like writing about these Quaker issues and things that have been probably swelling in my head for years. You know, when I started, I was just sort of whistling in a wind to sort of writing these things and like who's really reading these things. And people though started commenting and not instantly, but you'd get like an email saying like, I just stumbled on this post you wrote six months ago. It's a lot of things I've been thinking about saying this is great and then they go on for three or four paragraphs about what they're thinking. You start emailing back and forth and two months later they start their blog. And so there's this whole kind of blogging network that kind of started accumulating together. You know, I come from a publishing background so I'm always thinking about how to sort of increase whatever kind of publishing energy there is or writing energy there is. So as new blogs came, I started posting on my blog, hey everyone check out such and such blog or hey so and so wrote in a great post, check it out. So I started doing like that as much as my own writing. After a while and really it's just sort of evolved from there. So then I started like a links blog as they call it where I'm just like the links of things that I found this day or this week that are interesting for Quakers. So people can look and it was just a sort of sidebar on my blog. Here's the neat stuff I found. Then that became kind of more popular in my own blog. So I put it on its own page on my blog. You know, here's all the stuff that people can go directly there. And then, you know, it's obvious like this has more of a life than my own blog altogether. So you register the domain and it sort of has grown from there. Before you mentioned you were trying to figure out what a Quaker blog is and how that's different from a Quaker who writes a blog. And what is the difference, if any, that you found? I guess I would sort of answer a different way that one of... So when I had to get co-editors and when I decided to get co-editors I had to sort of figure out guidelines. So what's going in my head when I pick a blog to feature? And one of the things I realized is that it had to talk somehow explicitly about Quaker faith. The person had to make the connection with Quaker faith. So if you have a Quaker who blogs they might talk about, you know, peace or environmental issues, if they're like, you know, liberal friends or like, they'll focus on this without sort of doing that background work of why this is a Quaker concern. And that, I don't think helps someone who's a complete seeker who's trying to learn about friends. Yeah, we are for peace, but why? Right. You know, so one of the things, the qualifications to put up there is that they have to sort of connect the dots back to why this is a Quaker concern. And it works for, you know, for liberal friends it might be, you know, why is peace or environmental justice a Quaker concern for evangelical friends or, you know, many other types of friends and maybe, well, why is the Bible something that friends should be reading? You know, don't just say, we're friends, we should read the Bible, we're friends, we should believe in peace, but why? So do that back up. I see. Okay. I want to sort of open up the conversation more broadly to what you think Quaker's relationship should be spiritually and theologically, I guess, to the internet and to technology in general, because it's this huge new world that, you know, we're confronted with now. What should the spiritual relationship be with technology? You know, I think that the Internet has, really, I think the Internet is sort of God's gift to friends in a way that makes us much more visible than we've ever been. You know, we're this tiny infinitesimal little group of people who have a big reputation, but there's not many of us and the Internet makes us much more visible. The most important outreach tool for the past 10 years, bar none, has been belief net, the belief net quiz, the belief omatic, they call it, where people will go and it'll purport to tell you what religion you should be part of and you answer all these questions. And it seems rigged because everyone comes out to be a Quaker. And so we've gotten, we've had like thousands of people, you know, checking out, well, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people, really, actually, checking out liberal friends and they call it liberal friends and orthodox friends is what belief net calls it, but checking us out because their answers came up that way. And that's so interesting. And we have people who are like, you know, on boards of our Quaker institutions now, we have people who are writing who, unbeknownst to me, you know, I'll be talking with them and, you know, thinking they've been doing this forever. And I say, oh, no, I took belief net. And so it's been around for like 10 years or maybe more. Wow, I wonder if the numbers have actually grown since the kind of boom of the Internet in the early 2000s. That would be an interesting project. Well, sure. But there's tons of people. And it's always been all the websites I've had belief net has been one of the things that have driven people to the site. Well, thank you for talking with me. Thank you for having me. So we are on the Internet and loving it, really. Recently, a young adult friend's Facebook group was started where young adult friends can post job opportunities, blog updates, and any other information relevant to young Quakers. It absolutely exploded when it was first created. Clearly, there was a need for this kind of virtual community. I spoke with the creator of the group, Stephen Dotson, about Facebook and being a friend online. What would you say is a Quakerly way to engage with Facebook? A Quakerly way to engage with Facebook. Well, first of all, I think it's hilarious that Facebook's key verb is our key identity, you know? I never thought about that. "Friending people" isn't a whole new connotation in these days. So as friends, how do we friend? I really think it comes back to looking at it as a means to an end. Well, for example, my middle school friends program here at Philadelphia Yearly Meeting has its own Facebook group. And this doesn't serve to necessarily create the bonds that these kids have, right? That happens at these gatherings that we have, where they spend a lot of time in fellowship and explore spiritual questions, and they play together and sing together, and you know, that's where the bonds are formed, but what it preserves is kind of the weak ties among people, and it enables them to have conversations and get information about the community in between those events. And so I think one of the key things to keep in mind always is, "Am I using this tool in the hopes that it will bring me closer to people in person eventually? That it will eventually culminate in a greater, more in-depth engagement with this person, ideally, you know, in the flesh? Or am I just indulging myself in these broad-ranged conversations and kind of insulating myself from really confronting people and really committing to relationship?" In general, I think the world has a very watered-down definition of community. The word itself gets thrown around very, very loosely and very lightly, and for myself, I define community as intimate connections that I really can only maintain with about 250 people. In the end, I think you can't pretend that, you know, your thousand friends on Facebook are actually your community. There's a balance, too, I think, between the individual and community, and that's a tension that Quakers have always kind of wrestled with, right, in the root of our theology is that there can be a personal and direct relationship with God from in each individual. And from that, we kind of move out and say, "Well, that relationship really is incomplete until it's brought into a place of support and accountability in a corporate body of friends." So I think there's a danger in all these online tools because they really emphasize the individual and they really promote the individual's voice, you know, listen to me, listen to me, listen to me. This is what Twitter, blogs, Facebook, they all really foster. So I think there's a danger in that and we really need to stay sensitive to it. That's what I was going to say, actually, is this overindulgence of the ego. I mean, it's a place where the ego can just expand and expand because the platform's always there and there aren't people telling you you should not be on Facebook as much because they're on Facebook and they're engaging with that whole ego that you've created for yourself. So yeah, how should Quakers deal with their online identity? What should your relationship be to that? I think it kind of gets back to the need for all of us to try and embrace this in a manner consistent with friends, right? There's a parallel comparison between online world and the offline world. If I was running around talking about just yelling at the top of my lungs like, "Look at this article. Watch this video. Listen to the things I have to say." You know, eventually my community would clue into that because, you know, people, community is actually people who are around you, you know, and they would say, "You know, Steven, you need to tone it down a little bit. It's kind of kind of jumping the shark there, you know, whatever." But the problem, I think, in part is that we both isolate and individuate and expand that individual sense online and the rest of our community may not even know what we're doing, right? And so we need to get everybody to be present and we need to share and build the bridge between our digital and analog lives. Otherwise, we're lacking a kind of wholeness both in ourselves and in how community works. You've heard of the New York Times cartoon. This is a famous cartoon where it's one dog at a computer turning to another dog and he says, "You know, the internet's great. No one needs to know your dog." You know, people can pretend and do indulge in kind of an escapism sometimes and recreate themselves online. And I really don't think that's healthy necessarily. I mean, there can be a sense in which that gives you a new start and kind of is an opportunity for grace, but I think much more likely it's indulgent and not based in a genuine sense of who you are. It's really just about bringing the entire world online so that we can be as responsible for one another online as we are in person in the real communities. I mean, it's a big task. It's a big task and it also frightens me, right? Because I almost feel like I'm promoting transhumanism that we should be merging with technology and these kinds of things. But it's clear to me at this point that there's no going back. The world is not going to say, "Oh, you know what? This internet thing. Just a little too crazy. Look, WikiLeaks. Yeah, we don't want that." You know? So, I mean, it's adapt or fall by the wayside, fall into a relevancy. Yeah. And there's been different points during the history of friends where the forms and the ways in which our faith has taken expression have had to change drastically. And sometimes that's meant adopting other traditions or doing things that are almost, you know, these revivals swept through the Midwest and the South after the Civil War. And compared to the quietism of Quakerism going on at that time, everyone's spiritually worn and torn. You know, if you see a big tent revival and you're a Quaker teenager, are you going to go and sit in silence with your elders who are, you know, really just kind of resigned in a certain sense? Or are you going to be attracted and sucked into this very alive, vibrant energy? You know, there were Quaker ministers who said at the time, you know, either we go with them to these revivals and we start doing some of these revival things ourselves. Or else we're going to lose the entire generation that's coming here. And, you know, we don't have anything that it can appeal to them. And this is a story that Max Carter shared with me and the way he always ends the story is, you know, in a certain sense that we've had to continually throw away the old forms and embrace these new ones. And there is always the question of have we lost more than we've gained? And I don't know. I don't know. But it's something you have to confront. Otherwise, you're just not going to be a part of the story moving forward. Yeah. When you speak with people about technology, you speak with a lot of older friends about Facebook. What are some tools that you give older people? Where I think there's potential for everyone is in using technology and this need to bridge the generational divide as a cure in of itself. So you feel like you don't get to be in contact with your grandson so much because he really doesn't use email. He just uses Facebook. Maybe you don't even use email, right? But you have the opportunity there to approach your grandson and ask him to teach you. And in turn, I think you have the opportunity to teach him what Quakerism has to say about the application of these technologies to their lives, to offer them really important questions that challenge how they use these things and make them think about it in a way that reminds them that everything they do needs to come from that spiritual center. Yeah, our religious life isn't just something that we do in person. It's something we live out all the time. And this is now a serious way in which we live our lives. Yeah, that's interesting. Because I think both generations, like older generation says this is stupid, you know, and that's not very helpful. But the younger generation says, well, they don't know what they're talking about and they have nothing to offer us because they're speaking their language. The younger generation is too busy plotting revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and Yemen. So I bring that up not flippantly but also because these tools do have that potential. Quakers have a long tradition with social justice and peace work. And there's a tremendous power that can be harnessed to organize and communicate and coordinate messages and get information out that that can promote those things. That's true. And again, I know I look to the people who came before me, the giants of social justice who have tried these paths before me for guidance and trying to figure out ways to apply the lessons of the civil rights movement to today's social justice movements using these new tools. So it's not just about how do I use these tools in right relationship with other people through the tool but how do I use these tools to radically express my faith and realize the kingdom of God because they do have some potential for that. Still, they're not the only piece of the puzzle but it's a significant tool that can't be underestimated. Yeah, how do you use Facebook to create the kingdom of God on earth? That's a good question. Egypt, I think, is a beautiful, beautiful example in Tunisia, both of which were foundationally supported by groups on Facebook that were able to communicate and send out messages to coordinate people's actions to encourage a unified approach that was peaceful, that had clear demands. Right. You know, all this. If there's an equation there, it's that communication and community are essential ingredients in building the kingdom. Good communication and good community. And the communication piece is where these online tools can really offer some power. Oh, cool. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you. This is fun. I'm so glad you're doing this conversation. I think it's vitally important. Finally, I wanted to explore the spiritual effects of all of this technology. So I conducted a little experiment. I went on a technology fast and recorded my experience. You're listening to spirit and action on Northern spirit radio production. See our website, northern spirit radio dot org, find our free and downloadable archives of the past six and a half years. We've got links to our guests and more info about them. And there is the opportunity to post comments about a particular show or in general. It's great to hear from all of you. These programs are broadcast in a number of states across the USA, but how do you hear them? And maybe you want to have another local station carry them, contact us, post a comment, and get involved. We've got a special treat today for spirit and action because Madeline Shafer is sitting in for me. She does a podcast called Friends Speaks My Mind that you'll want to check out. And today's topic is Quakers and Technology. The lessons are universal and you'll undoubtedly get some priceless insights from Madeline's work. So back to Madeline Shafer and her next experience, a technology fast. So I'm going on this fast technology fast. That is just one week. I'm getting rid of my cell phone, my iPod, and my Facebook page. I'm a little bit scared, you know? Like, I mean, there's this fear that I'll be disconnected and somehow some amazing thing will happen and I won't know about it and then, I don't know, I won't have any friends. I guess that's my fear is that I will lose all of my friends. And I guess what I need to realize is that it's something I don't need friends because, of course, I need friends. But friends are not who I am. My relationships cannot really address issues of loneliness and deep-seated questions of meaning. I mean, these are pretty basic, kind of, you know, spiritual issues that we grapple with. And I realized that my iPod and Facebook and my cell phone are really keeping me from addressing those issues and they're keeping me from engaging with my spiritual self. I'm really looking forward to a more spontaneous existence. I think that's why you feel spiritually surprised when you're connected to all this technology because it takes all this spontaneity out of existence. And without that, there's just no magic. Magic doesn't exist in something that's created. It's exist in something that you create and that happens to you, not that you make happen. And so I'm getting rid of technology so I can let things happen to me. So, it should be an interesting week. I speak with a bit of sleep, which gets rid of me before I get to work. Day number one. I started the day feeling really good. I definitely felt much more connected to everyone around me and much more aware of what was going on. Then around probably two or three, I just really wanted to go on Facebook. And I really wanted to have my cell phone. I just really wanted to connect to somebody because I was feeling really lonely. Because I'm sitting in this office basically by myself. And I just wanted to go on Facebook and see what people were doing. I wanted to text somebody and get some kind of human response. I was just feeling lonely. I wish that I weren't lonely and I wish that I could just be strong and say, "Oh, well, I'm not really lonely and we're all connected and I'm just loved by God." And which is true, it's just like, "Oh, I think I'm just going through withdrawal right now. I just feel lonely, but I know that I'm not. And I'm not lonely. I'm not alone in a kind of larger spiritual sense. But I have a lot of people that I know who love me and who would love to spend time with me. And I don't have to worry about that." Day two of the technology fast. I still feel I'm pretty crappy, to be honest. You know, it's hard because I just moved to Westphilly and I'm working on something take a lot of my time and, you know, getting over somebody and getting rejected. You know, things happen in life that are shitty and it's a lot easier when I have my technology to cling to you in those times. But it's so tempting to just go to drink or go smoke weed or do something like that. And not that I could not do that. I mean, it's not technology. If anything, that's probably a much more historical means of forgetting reality. But I guess it wasn't just about rejecting technology. It was about getting in touch with myself and forcing myself to be with myself. Day numero toa. This is a hard day. This is really challenging for me. I made the mistake of bringing my iPad with me to work because I needed to charge it because I use it in my room like I plug it to my stereo and listen to it in my room. And so I brought it with me and I was just tempted the whole, and I was just having a bad day, a series of events and whatever. I was just feeling shitty and I was all my way home from work and I just wanted to listen to my iPad so bad. So today is number four. I felt much better today, actually. Yeah, I realized that I actually really am appreciating the quiet time I have now. And I realized that I like my privacy. I like having my mind to myself. I like not having to share it constantly with other people. I mean, it wasn't easy all day. I definitely had moments when I just wish that my iPad was like listening to music, but you know, it was fine. It's just nice having my privacy again. I'm just, I'm feeling less congested. Like my life is just less crowded with people speaking and I'm less worried about staying on top of things and feeding my own loneliness with something. And then when I do, I feel like I do more constructive things like playing guitar and it's given me a lot of time to think about my radio, what I'm doing here and just letting my brain work on things that aren't, you know, social networking, which, you know, overall, not actually that important to me. I mean, and it never has been really important for me to have lots of friends. I've never been in a group of friends, really. I'm really more of a one-on-one person. So I mean, it's silly that Facebook would have mattered so much to me. Yeah, I'm feeling good and I'm feeling good today. And I mean, I only have another day left and I don't know when I turn Facebook back on. Sometimes I see things and I want to put some on people's walls and I just, you know, I want to like, oh, I wonder what so-and-so's favorite blah, blah, blah is and I want to check that out. But I think there's just, I've developed this way to thinking because I was on Facebook. And so once I get a stop using Facebook for a certain amount of time, I won't have those impulses. So I'm just going to stay off Facebook for a while. Probably bring my cell phone, although I'm going to, I don't know what I'm going to do with my cell phone. And then iPod, oh, I want my iPod so bad. Maybe I'll leave my cell phone turned off. I don't know. Let's see. This is my first day back. It's 8.07, listening music, as usual. So let me reopen my Facebook out. Just to, should I? I don't know. It feels like if I do it, then there's no going back, but no, you know what? I'm going to see how long I cannot use Facebook. I'm going to do that. I'm exiting out of it. Okay, well, that was different than I thought it would be. I'm still not back on Facebook, and I don't know when I will be again. Facebook is beckoning me, though, as my professional life becomes more demanding and my need to network becomes increasingly important. But I'm learning to develop limits, and if anything, my fast certainly increased by awareness. I suppose, first and foremost, it's important to not let technology consume you. It's important to make good choices. As young Quakers become older Quakers, I hope we can establish some good guidelines for how Quakers should approach this fast-paced and at times overwhelming phenomenon that is technology. [MUSIC] I believe that Gandhi's views were the most imagined of all the political mind in our time. He would strive to do things in his spirit, not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in anything, you believe is even. [MUSIC] What does a Quaker website look like? Well, if that Quaker organization has a website, it would probably look a lot like any other website. But are there defining characteristics of a website created by a Quaker organization? To find out, I spoke with Chris Pfeiffer, the web manager at Friends General Conference, and Erin Crossman, the web director of the American Friends Service Committee. I started by asking about the process of developing AFSC's new website in 2008. One of the things that was a challenge with the old site was, AFSC's site had built up over a long period of time, kind of organically. The site had been started relatively early in terms of organizations having a website. There was a staff person, Terry Foss, who recognized that AFSC should have something, and so he built something. And then over time, bits and pieces got added to it, and they redesigned it a little bit, and then they'd add some more bits and pieces, and then they redesigned it again and had bits and pieces. But it had never really been stopped and looked at all the way and done in a way where somebody had the authority to say, "This whole section's really out of date. We're going to get rid of it." And this material that nobody had ever been able to just throw things away that weren't accurate, weren't up to date, weren't good, useful material for our audience. And so that had been a long standing challenge. And one of the things that I was given as an opportunity, when we did that that second redesign in 2008, was a real opportunity to envision the website from scratch. And it also meant that we had their friend work with the different regions with all of AFSC's different program areas to say, "What is it that you have that's really good that needs to be brought forward?" And so it really helped a lot of those programs stop and think about how they talked about their own work, and really put out much better materials than they'd had in the years previously, because they stopped and actually looked and really looked at a deep look and really thought about it. So it sounds like it was beneficial to the organization, having to think and organize and think about presentation. I think it was. I think a lot of folks around here felt like it was. Did rethinking that website, did that change the way that you communicate with different AFSC organizations around the country and around the world? It was part of a change that had kind of started at that point and really has grown since then. And we were actually used somewhat as a model for some of that change that has been working hard at getting out of a mindset of each little piece of the organization being independent. That made a lot of sense when there wasn't really easy ways to communicate and collaborate over great distances. And because you work, each program works in its own community and is very focused on that community. It made a lot of sense for those folks to be very independent. But there were opportunities that were getting lost in that cross communication. And we were part of a larger organization to move towards looking at ourselves as a whole. So the increased communication between the different branches between the different work, AFSC was better able to understand, okay, what is our common vision or what is our common goal as an organization? It's helped us better articulate it. And I think there are a lot of people who had a shared vision, but it was recognizing that we did have that shared vision and again clarifying how we articulated it. Okay, well, and Chris, you are currently working on redoing the FGC website, is that correct? Yes. Are you sort of a project manager? I'm one of a couple people who are pretty deeply involved here. And so this is a question for both of you and especially for Chris as you were, is this probably somewhat fresh in your mind? What are the strengths and challenges in creating a website using the organizational structures that Quakers have such as consensus decision-making and, you know, committees and subcommittees and do you find their benefits and disadvantages? You know, I've built a number of websites for nonprofits as sort of freelance and, you know, there are pretty distinct differences in terms of building a website for a quick organization versus even, you know, I built the site for the World Student Christian Federation North America, you know, which is a similarly volunteer driven organization. You know, there are some impacts just in how you plan time and scheduling and, you know, friends are used to giving a lot of space for deliberation on questions. And there are some real challenges around performing that kind of deliberation in a limited time frame in order to produce a site that's somewhere close to the deadline that we hope to meet. You know, I think that said, you know, early on in the process, I did a map of what I was thinking the site would involve and include. And it's always amazing to have, you know, fairly in-depth conversations with people across the organization and hear really interesting ideas or approaches that I hadn't ever thought about. And one of the challenges is to say, you know, pretty deeply engage the committee structures and the processes of the organization while also saying the fundamental organizational structure of the site itself cannot be our internal structure. We don't want to have to force somebody who wants to learn a little bit about Quakerism to understand, well, you know, you have to go to the growing subcommittee of the Committee for Nurturing Ministries, and that's where you'll find your information about new to Quakerism stuff. So, you know, we're actually today, we were playing around with other sort of organizational models around different audiences or, you know, events and resources and things like that. So, do you see any ways in which we do Quakers do create structure, work with structure, being translated onto the website, on either website? One of the questions that we've really been sitting with that's actually something that I'm really excited by is, you know, so there's a contemporary, you know, a secular model of blogging, which is, you know, one friend or one individual sits down and writes at a blog post. And, you know, I mean, there are some friends who do a fairly deep discernment process around their blogging, and there are, you know, other people who are non-Quaker or whatever where you get much less well discerned content. So, there's a real interesting challenge of what does it look like to, you know, what does it look like when FGC blogs, what does it look, you know, what is the discernment process, how do we reflect good Quaker practice? And I think that, you know, we haven't entirely figured out what that is, but we know that it's different, and that there's more steps than one person sitting down and writing. The ways we develop content for FSC site, and somewhat with some work I've done with Philadelphia Early Meeting on the site there, I think there's a difference between organizing the website to map with a particular committee structure or a particular process plan, as opposed to making sure that the material matches the, or carries a tone of friends. At FSC we work pretty hard at trying to help staff describe their work in ways that map the values of the organization. If we move most of our services online, do you see there being any change in, like, the ways that we organize FGC, or just like our organizations in general, maybe that's like a larger, broader societal question, but like in terms of the structure of FGC as it is, do you see the website taking over, changing that at all? I'm not sure taking over is the right word. I think it is, it's important to think about it. I don't, I'm not sure what changes would come. The basic structure of most Quaker organizations, I mean, FGC was 1900. You know, the basic committee structure and the ways in which you get involved with FGC is by joining a committee. And, you know, I get excited about the prospect of what does it, what does it look like to, you know, to have a thousand ways that you can be involved with the work of FGC, you know, remotely, you know, if you have an hour to give, if you have, you know, a week to give, a month to give, and I, all of that becomes much more possible using the web. So much more volunteer based potentially. Yeah, I think, and I, you know, I think that it becomes the organization can become more responsive to the needs of friends, the more friends we're able to have involved virtually. There are some efficiencies that, that you can bring about by using technology in the ways in which we manage our programs or the ways in which we deliver our services. And I think that's important. I think it's also important that we hang on to the essence of why it is that we're doing what we're doing and what is, what is this program supposed to do? You know, what is, what is the traveling ministry's program look like in the 21st century where, you know, you have a model that started 1660s, what? But there's an essence there that's really important. That is, that is probably not done well virtually. That involves a friend sitting with other friends in person. But how can we make the management in the back office smoother so that it's easier for, you know, for us to keep up with, you know, where requests are coming from and what our needs and respond to them better? Yeah, my experience having been in technology in a quick organization for almost 10 years now, has been that the technology needs to be there to, in a way that adapts the technology to meet the best needs of the friends and the people doing the work. That people shouldn't redesign how they work to match the website unless the website has been designed to most efficiently empower their work. And so that the goal there is to be getting the work done well, not saving money. Yeah, that may be, that is often a very nice side effect of doing, of getting the technology out of the way of doing the work and using it as a useful tool. Well, thank you both. That was excellent. When I returned to Philadelphia and entered the Quaker Virtual World, I encountered all sorts of uniquely Quaker sign-offs. A big one is any variety of peace, including peace and love, packs, peace and blessings, in peace, in Christ's friendship and love, in the light, in friendship, and one of my personal favorites, lightly. The list goes on and grows and expands as Quakers increasingly use the internet to foster relationships and communities. It's that first generation we look back to to find out what the end of friend needs through and through. I don't fully understand it. I don't know if I can, but I understand enough to know that I am a fan. Today's Spirit and Action Show was hosted by Madeleine Shafer, who also produces her series, Friends Speaks My Mind. Thanks to Madeleine for sitting in for me today, and we can all look forward to hearing more from her in the future. But I also want to encourage you to think about what you have to contribute to the conversation. Maybe you have a leading to share your insights and interviews on a topic appropriate for either Spirit in Action or Song of the Soul. If so, and to discuss the possibility, contact me via the info at northernspiritradio.org. Your input and energy will be welcomed. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will know this word, oh no. With every voice, with every song, we will know this word, oh no. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing.