worship with cell phones or cell phone worship?

So I went to worship this evening at House of Mercy in St. Paul to listen to a friend preach. While there I couldn't quite get away from the concepts we talked about in class. There really wasn't much of any technology used in this worship service...but there were cell phones everywhere! It started with Tim Snyder taking a photo with his phone from behind the altar to tweet that worship was beginning. Then it was the high school aged kid sitting in front of me playing Teeter on his phone (I couldn't tell if he was better than me or not.). Next it was the kid's mom tweeting something, followed by the kid's dad checking his Facebook feed a few minutes later. I went without noticing any cell phones for a few minutes, but then the friend next to me checked his e-mail quickly, and then I had to check what time it was on my own phone...

I've seen some really creative ways of actually engaging people's cell phone usage in worship for the purpose of worship. Jeremy Johnson from our class posted about what his church did on Easter Sunday. The Worship Community has some ideas that I'd definitely consider using in high school ministry. But what about the level of engagement we seem to have with our phones -- a level of engagement that many seem to struggle to leave behind for even an hour of worship? Does it help some of us focus on what we're experiencing in worship? Have we lost a sense of what it means to fully retreat as Jesus did and spend time with our Creator?

"all this nothing has meant more to me than so many somethings"

This quote is from the film You've Got Mail, quoted by Mary Hess in her book, Engaging Technology in Theological Education, and in many ways it does a great job of describing what being a part of a DL MDiv cohort at Luther Seminary has meant for me. Last night most of the MDiv DL students on campus gathered together with each other and several faculty members for a wine and cheese party. This time around I'm only on campus for one short weekend, but am soaking up all of the time I can with my friends. We might not do what most friends do together...as in spend entire days at coffee shops reading and writing...but we sure do experience community while we do it! Mary writes, "Far from suggesting that online learning is necessarily disembodied, or unrelational, we might actually suggest, instead, that this emerging space for learning can be quite embodied and quite relational (66)." I don't think that our community would be what it is today without the chance to come together on campus, but I also don't think we'd experience nearly the depth of relationships if we weren't engaged together all year in online learning. Thanks, Luther, for forming this community.

By the way, the picture is of several members of our cohort studying together for our RTA final this past January. Just another example of our DL community.