Focal living consultation

Mennonites and Anabaptists have a legacy of discerning how culture influences us, from jewelry to vehicles to using musical instruments in worship. But that discernment is not happening with our current use of technology, Arthur Paul Boers observed.

To foster discussion about these issues, Boers, who is associate professor of pastoral theology at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, coordinated a two-day consultation with people from different disciplines in the church. Pastors, writers, students, activists and academics gathered from March 5 to 7 at AMBS to look at how Mennonites interact with technology. A resource person for the sessions was Albert Borgmann, philosophy professor at the University of Montana in Missoula, who has studied and written extensively on the impact of technology on people and communities.

As a Christian, Borgmann examines not only how technology shapes us; he also explores the things and activities that give us meaningful connections with others. These he calls focal things and focal practices.

Valerie Weaver-Zercher, writer from Mechanicsburg, Pa., who was one of the 21 participants, said, “I liked Borgmann’s careful, precise and rather humble way of outlining the manner in which technology forms us and also the ways in which we can resist.”

Todd Friesen, pastor of Lombard Mennonite Church, Lombard, Ill., said, “For some time, I’ve been troubled by the way that technology is often increasingly inserting itself into the center of our lives. This consultation gave me the language—and the courage—to begin talking about these trends.”

As a case study in how faith communities make decisions about technology, the consultation participants visited in the homes of two Amish bishops. They also learned from participant Donald B. Kraybill of the Young Center of Elizabethtown (Pa.) College about how Amish and Old Order groups choose to use or resist technology.

Boers emphasized that the consultation was not anti-technology. Instead, it provided opportunities to look carefully at how technology is changing us and what kinds of practices are more meaningful and helpful to congregations and communities.

Weaver-Zercher commented that she sees Mennonites as reluctant to talk about issues of technology. “When we aren’t willing to talk about how technology shapes us, we may not notice the ways we and our churches are changing,” she said. “We lose the ability to reflect communally on how we are being shaped by our culture and whether we are happy with the manner in which we are being formed.”

Trevor Bechtel, assistant professor of religion at Bluffton (Ohio) University, said he had hoped the consultation would push the discussion even farther than it did. “I’m interested in probing not just whether we should use the Internet or not, but what on the Internet is virtuous. Can we think of ways that the church should use Facebook? (I think so.) What does community on Second Life or World of Warcraft mean? We need to be critical (and not just negative) about these, too, because Mennonites are using them.”

Boers said a general conclusion among the participants was that we must not simply go along with trends; we need to ask questions and to pay attention to what is happening as a result of how we use technology. He pointed out that Borgmann calls us to concentrate on focal things and focal practices; then decisions related to technology will fall in line with those priorities.

This consultation and Boers’s work with the ideas of focal living are funded by a grant from the Louisville Institute at Louisville (Ky.) Seminary. The $40,000 grant is providing a portion of his salary during the 2007–2008 year so that he can devote time to writing about focal living. He has interviewed Borgmann in depth, visited Menno Village in Japan as an example of where people are putting ideas of focal living into practice and interviewed a wide range of people about focal practices, such as bird watching, endurance walking and quilting. Boers intends to develop a book that incorporates what he is learning through these conversations and research.