Copyright holder: Tyndale University, 3377 Bayview Ave., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M2M 3S4 Att.: Library Director, J. William Horsey Library Copyright: This Work has been made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws of Canada without the written authority from the copyright owner. Copyright license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License Citation: Mills, Jason. “Virtual Virtue: Exploring the Fruitfulness of Online Pastoral Education.” April 29, 2021, Tyndale University, Toronto, Ontario: MPEG-4, 46:19 min. ***** Begin Content ****** Well, I'm going to just take a moment to introduce Jason here. Jason is a pastor at the Free Methodist's Church in Thornbury, Ontario Blue Mountain Community Church. And he is a PhD candidate at St. Michael's there at TST. His topic and research is fascinating. Jason is also a member of the Pastoral Network with his wife Erica, who they copastor that church at Thornbury. I've been following Jason's research for the past three or four years as he's been working on this. And typically when we meet, I'll ask him a very pointed question and he'll say, well, I'm still researching, so I'm looking forward to some actual findings. And so without sort of further comments, Jason, besides you previously pastored an EMC church in Hanover, Ontario as well. Not just sort of an academic, but actual pastoral experience to bring to this discussion, I guess is what I'm getting at for sure. Good. Well, I'm going to turn it over to you, Jason, and we'll see where it goes from here. Thanks, Dan. I appreciate it. And welcome to everyone. I'm really glad to be able to share this with you. My interest in this topic has been for quite a number of years, probably 2010, 2015. I was pastoring in Congregation, as Dan was saying, and I started to have some questions around how do we form and shape pastures? How do we teach pastors online? As more schools were moving in that direction. I don't have a ton of time to go into the background. I really like to get right into this paper. But in 2017, I started my PhD. And last year in March, March 11, I was at the University of Toronto Libraries. I loaded up my backseat of my car with books in order to start my dissertation, and within days, the world kind of closed down and a lot of schools moved online. So it just happens to be a bit of a timely topic and opportunity for me to be researching in this area. So here's where we're going to go today, a bit of an outline. We'll talk about the Association of Theological Schools and online programs. We're going to talk a little bit about philosophies technology. We're going to talk about three visenbaum. Heidegger and McLuhan. We're going to talk a little bit about the Internet and education. We'll look at some theological considerations as well as some educational considerations. We'll look at pastural skills and virtues, the acquisition of those pastural virtues, and then I'll give you some conclusions and maybe some recommendations if we have time. But I'm not sure we will in 2017. So this obviously is highly relevant. In 2017, the Online Learning, the Association of Theological Schools, the Director of Accreditation, Tom Tanner said almost half, about 45% of of schools offered degrees that are either completely or mostly online. In an article in 2019 by the Association of Theological Schools Director of Research and Faculty Development, it states this that as of this year, so that it's a 2019 year 62%. So 163 ATS schools had been offering distance education online in August 2020, faith and Leadership interview with the ATS Executive Director Frank Yamada. He described the new accreditation standards. The ATS just underwent significant review of their accreditation standards for schools, and he said, we changed residency requirements with these new standards. There are only residency requirements for the PhD program, and all other degree programs no longer have residency requirements. It provides schools the flexibility to be able to do, for example, more online distance education at this time. Now, it's not hard to see why the ATS has generously accommodated the shift online. There are many, many benefits, especially in times of pandemic. There's the capacity of shifting the time and place for students when they learn. There's the ability to support content in many formats, including multimedia. There's the accessibility of content that we have, ebooks, online articles. We can access them from anywhere, at any time. And there's opportunity for teachers and students to also be able to find things, accessibly between them. And then there's the capacity to support a variety of formats asynchronous synchronous, video, speech, text, all kinds of things as well. A study by Newman, Webb and Cochrane in 1997 found that the level of critical thinking was actually higher among online students. So there's many, many benefits to online education. I'm not going to go into great details about that. While there has been much written about the strengths and weaknesses of learning online, I found very little research on the impact of Internet technology on theological education, and specifically on past reformation. Now, there are some exceptions, like David Kelsey, Edwin Van Drill, Mark Ellingson. But there are very, very few. It would appear that theological educators have focused predominantly on discovering creative ways to leverage these technologies to teach more effectively online. After all, one of my professors said this about online learning the genie is out of the bottle, and it's not going back in. My interest is not so much in leveraging technologies for theological education. If you came today to find out all kinds of tools and ways that we can do this better, I won't give you that. Instead, the heart of my research in fact, my whole dissertation, which actually I'm submitting tomorrow, creates centers on an understudied aspect of theological education and that and it begins with this question how might technology itself be affecting student formation? Here's my conclusion. I'll say it to you right off the hop. The interaction of a person with technology, as is the case with online education, has the potential to diminish social well being, train our brains and behaviors to be distracted, and impede traditional pastural skill and virtue formation. Therefore, online learning programs, while helpful in many ways, I don't want you to hear that these aren't helpful. While helpful in many ways, they are not actually very helpful for developing character virtues and skills for pastoral ministry. Now let's look at some philosophies of technology. My argument begins with a particular way of seeing technology. Heather Kanuka has frames these philosophies in three ways. The first position is called uses determinism. It's the view that pertains to the instrumental uses of technology and correspondingly, the uses effects on technology and society. For example, I have a hammer and a nail. I use the hammer to drive the nail. I use the nail to hold lumber together to frame a house. The hammer does what I want it to do. The nail does what the hammer makes it do. The tools just get used, right? The second position is referred to technological determinism. This view focuses on the forms and effects that technology has on uses and society. I have a nail and a hammer. What happens when I hold the hammer? What happens to my arm? What happens to my body? What happens to the nail when it gets hit by the hammer? Okay. The third position is referred to as social determinism. And this is the view that asserts the social contexts and cultures affect forms and uses of technological artifacts. In this view, we look at what is being constructed and determine what's needed. Maybe we don't need a hammer and a nail. Maybe we're working with steel. And so we need welders, right? It's starting from that place of what do we need in society as a whole? So how is technology itself affecting our humanness? I'm taking up the technological determinism perspective. How does the technology affect us? How does swinging the hammer affect my arm, my body? I want to know. How might our interaction with technology itself affect our humanness? In the mid 1960s, MIT computer science professor Joseph Vesenbaum created a program to interact with people based on rigerian psychotherapy. Basically echoing back what the other person is saying. These Inbound's observation of the emotional connections between the machine and those who interacted with it convinced him of the shaping power of technology on human beings. He tells the story of his secretary having watched him build the computer. She knew it was a computer, and after only a few interchanges that his secretary had, you can see that's Visenbaum sitting down and typing on the lies of the computer. After only a few interactions where she typed, she asked Visenbaum to leave the room because she was having this emotional moment with the device and it was stirring some things up for her. Vizambaum says this what I had not realized is that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people. This insight led me to attach new importance to the questions of relationship between the individual and the computer and hence to resolve to think about them. Here's another one. Martin Heidegger philosopher suggests that technology changes human behavior as well as the natural order of creation. He sees some technology at the center of an unnatural reordering of creation, changing human beings and human societies in such ways that make them more machine like. Referring to a hydroelectric power plant that was set into the Rhine River. He describes how the power plant challenges and takes from the river, extracts from the river. And it's a very different way that technology operates than, say, if you consider a bridge, uses the reference of a bridge that spans the river, also gets placed in the river, but doesn't actually take anything from the river. Heidegger says the challenging happens in that the energy concealed in nature is unlocked. What is unlocked is transformed. What is transformed is stored up. What is stored up is in turn, distributed. What is distributed is switched about. Ever anew unlocking, transforming, sorting, distributing, and switching about are all ways of this term revealing. Now, these ways of revealing for Heidegger are different from the revealing, what he called puasus, which lets what presences come forth into appearance. Heidegger describes puasus as, quote, a bringing forth, for example, the bursting of a blossom into bloom. See the difference between something that's naturally coming forth versus that hydroelectric power plant that is actually changing, shaping, and bringing something very different forward. Marshall McLuhan if we narrow the focus by looking specifically at media, the internet, and their effects on human beings, marshall Mcluhan can be helpful. He was interested in the effects that media have on people and society. McLuhan posits that media can be separated into what is noticed, what he called figure, and what remains unnoticed, what he called ground. So, for example, he uses this example of a radio program going out of the airwaves as being the figure. What we're hearing, but what we don't see is the ground. We don't see the actual towers that transmit the signal. Terrence Gordon describes how McLuhan saw this principle in the myth of Narcissus. He says this in describing the myth of narcissus. McLuhan begins by pointing out the common misrepresentation in which Narcissus is said to have fallen in love with himself. In fact, it was his inability to recognize his image that brought him to grief. He succumbed to the same numbing effects that all technologies produce if the user does not scrutinize their operation. Technologies create new environments, and the new environments create pain from the body's nervous, and the body's nervous system shuts down to block the pain. The name narcissus comes from the Greek word narcosis, meaning numbness. Here we are on Zoom. By way of example. If we were to look at Zoom and see that there are certain elements that you can't see that are happening in and around me, just like there are certain things about you that I cannot see. So zoom does some things really well, but it also creates this disconnect. So there's the figure of what you're seeing, and then there's the ground of what is unseen. You don't see what's behind my computer and those sorts of things. There's also something else that's happening here as we are on zoom, and that is some things are extended and some things are amputated. Again, using McLuhan's words, Gordon again summarizing McLuhan's is this whether you are pedaling a bicycle or speeding down the freeway in your car, your foot is performing such a specialized task you cannot at the moment allow it to perform its basic function of walking right. Because the foot is on the pedal or the foot is on the bicycle pedal or on the pedal of the car, it cannot walk. So although the medium has given you the power to move much more quickly, you are immobilized paralyzed. In this way, our technologies both extend and amputate. Amplification becomes amputation. The central nervous system reacts to the pressure and the disorientation of the amputation by blocking perception. He ends by saying Narcissus. Narcosis. Marshall's ultimate message might well have been, and this is what Douglas Copeland says might well have been that the body is the medium and trumps all else. Returning to the question how might technology itself affect student formation? The answers are hopefully already starting to emerge. Visenbaum would say that there are changes to human emotional and relational dynamics. Heidegger would say there are changes in the way the natural way of being changing the natural way of being and functioning. McLuhan would remind us, media changes our perception of reality. Now, technology and student formation let's talk about some theological considerations. According to Vezenbaum, Heidegger and McLuhan, interacting with technology changes human beings, making us more machine like and affecting our ability to perceive reality. These shifts have major implications for such things as Christology. In the doctrine of the Incarnation, Regent College professor Craig Gay suggests that there is an urgent need to remember the significance of human embodiment in the face of growing influence of modern technology. This is what Gay writes in the book you see on the screen the incarnation of Jesus Christ is nothing if not a colossal endorsement of embodied human being, of the very walking, talking, eating, sleeping, working, loving way of being in the world that we presently and ordinarily enjoy. And although we are clothed in immortality at the resurrection of the dead, we will even then be recognizably embodied. After all, the resurrected Christ walked with, talked with, ate with and was handled by his astonished disciples. Quote this is what Jesus says look, my hands are my feet. He said to them, it is I myself touch and see. A ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see. I have. Gay goes on to say, true, the Christian tradition has from time to time lost sight of the significance of human embodiments. But in the face of the disembodying bent of modern technology, there is clearly an urgent need now to remember it. Likewise, James K. A. Smith, in his book Desiring the Kingdom, invites Christians into a renewed sacramental embrace of quote ashes to ashes, ashes to dust, ashes and dust, blood and bodies, fish and bread, unquote as a way of experiencing God's grace. There are at least two aspects of human formation that I want to talk about affected by technology and the Internet social well being. And we're going to talk about the brain in just a moment. The Internet promotes helpful connections with others, but research shows that it can lead to people feeling isolated and depressed. Large amounts of time online have been shown to lead to increases in depression. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's most important finding that the greater use of the Internet was associated with subsequent declines in family communication. Emotional ties to smart smartphone usage are also problems. Technostress, a term used by researchers Sharon Horwood and Jeremy Alglim, arises from, quote, cognitive emotional preoccupation with the smartphone, unquote. Furthermore, Leonard Reinecke and others found that everyday Internet use has been linked to, quote, procrastination and its psychological effects unquote. These aspects of social wellbeing affect ways of interacting with the world. Researchers on Web usage also highlight changes to the brain that affect thinking, according to Joseph Frith and others. Smartphone smartphones promote habitual checking behaviors reinforced by information rewards. As a result, Frith and others conclude that those who practice these behaviors, quote, perform worse in various cognitive tasks unquote than others. Similarly, David I. Smith, in his book Digital Life Together, says many digital media are structured to assist skim reading and swift location of data. Religious reading practices, in contrast, focus on depth of understanding and spiritual formation and are therefore associated with practices of reading slowly, repeatedly, communally and reverentially. Such reading is also associated with some basic Christian virtues, including patience, humility and charity. These entail avoiding hasty judgments, the efficiency of scanning and searching for information, and moving on as soon as we have located what we need can be valuable when we need to maximize the information at our fingertips. These strategies associated with such reading can, however, nurture superficiality and premature conclusions. They are also less well suited to the pursuit of personal transformation and deep engagement that belong to spiritually nourishing breeding. Mark Ellingson, in his article Neurobiological data on what online education could be doing to our spirituality and our Brains, says he writes about how the entire brain is activated while online at the cost of concentration, memory and intelligence. He goes on to say, It appears people may have less aptitude for deep thinking, aspirations and emotions that only emerge from meditative encounters with what transcends us. Let me offer you some educational considerations. Online educational technologies shape humans generally, but they also limit the ways educators educate. How computers store and use data restricts what educators can and cannot do. Take Corkis. This is the University of Toronto's online platform. It provides all kinds of options for educators, and yet they still or we still have to fit into the structure that that online interface offers. Additionally, computers and web platforms rather than a teacher, become the focal point for students. This was described to me in passing by a faculty mentor of mine, Jean Pierre Forte at the University of St. Michael's College, who suggested, quote the student's attention is not on the instructor, but Quirkus unquote. This increasing dependency on technology means that students have less FaceTime with teachers and peers, less time learning with and from others in an embodied context, and it may mean the loss of certain ministerial skills that are important for pastoral practice. Neil Postman describes the way the inventions of an important medical instrument change the practice of medicine and if you were listening to Deborah's Great talk just before this, some of this will actually be relevant and it needs to be looked at in light of what she shared. So Postulating Postman postulates that new technology impedes skill development, and he writes about the invention of the stethoscope. He says imposing an instrument between patient and doctor would transform the practice of medicine, the traditional methods of questioning patients, and here we're assuming the best. We're assuming the John Wesley style of listening to the person and hearing what's happening with them, as opposed to the physicians that would murder people through various interventions. Back to the quote the traditional methods of questioning patients, taking their reports seriously and making careful observations of exterior symptoms would become increasingly irrelevant. Doctors would lose the ability to conduct skillful examinations and rely more and more on machinery than on their own experience and insight. Postman goes on to suggest that modern physicians have indirect relationships with their patients and are predominantly mediated through technological machines that tell us all about ourselves. He writes by the turn of the 20th century, medical practices entered a new stage. The first has been characterized by direct communication with the patient's experiences based on what the patient reports and the doctor questions and observations. The second was characterized by indirect communication by direct communication with patient's bodies through physical examination, including the use of carefully selected technologies. The stages we are now in is characterized by indirect communication with patients experiences and body through technological machinery. You would argue that the advances in medical technology, even at the expense of physician skill, is a negative development, and certainly it's not what I'm arguing. However, the decline of experiential or somatic knowledge is worth noticing, especially in roles such as that as pastor, which rely on personal experience and knowledge of God as central to the work of ministry being filled by those educated using the online medium. According to the Program of Priestly Formation, which is the Roman Catholic document for training priests, it says Priests are called to prolong the presence of Christ. The one high priest embodying his way of life, making him visible in the midst of a flock entrusted to their care. Similarly, Will Willeman, pastor and theologian, has written those who we designate ministers are in the New Testament diakanai Paul's favorite title for Christian leaders, derived from the Greek word service. Significantly, it is the same word for that. It is the root word for that of butler or table waiter, terms that have a greater edge to them than that of ministry. If these pastoral skills and virtues such as the fruit of the spirit are not ideally developed online, how are they developed? Well, according to Aristotle, virtues are developed as skills. Aristotle says virtues. By contrast, we acquire just as we acquire crafts by having previously activated them. For we learn a craft by producing the same product, and we must produce when we have learned it, becoming builders, for instance, by building and harpers harpists, by playing the harp. So also then we become just by doing just actions. Temperate by doing temperate actions, and brave by doing brave actions. This is why practical, embodied experiences with seasoned mentors are so important for students in past reformation programs, especially for those in online programs. Let me wrap up by saying Bob Gidney writes about apprenticeship in a book learning to practice professional education and historical and contemporary perspective. He writes Work sites, it is perhaps worth noting, are more than just places where skills are learned. By simply being on site, hanging around, so to speak, one acquires attitudes and values through listening and watching professionals at work and play. Nor is this merely contingent. Virtually without exception, the literature on apprenticeship stresses hidden curriculum of values and norms that apprentices are expected to absorb and demonstrate. Now, I'd love to go on and tell you all so much more. I don't have time. Let me just wrap up by saying because students get theological field education opportunities, internships. Wonderful. And so those are critical parts of the program. How might technology affect student formation? Here's my conclusion the interaction of impersonate technology, as is the case in online education, has the potential to diminish, wellbeing, train the brain to be distracted and impede pastoral skill and virtue formation. Therefore, online learning programs and courses, while good, while good in many areas and for many things, are not particularly helpful for the development of character virtues and skills that are unique to pasture ministry. Embodied relationships such as theological field education internship opportunities with seasoned practitioners are essential. Wow. You landed it there, Jason. We're not quite sure. This is great. That was a whirlwind from Heidegger to here we are. So obviously, if there are people who have some questions, specific questions that you'd like to address to Jason, let's put them in the chat there, and we'll bring those to his attention. This is a topic that I'm quite fascinated with. I just did a normally five day residential DMin program at Northeastern Seminary in Rochester this January. It was relegated to three days online on zoom and what could and could not be accomplished in a normal residence. Five day residency DMin. was unbelievable about what didn't happen. We don't have any sort of first questions there. I'm interested a little bit in the notion around Christian theology and the embodiment, the sacrament, that Christ is embodied. He's not an avatar. Any kind of thoughts there that sort of come out of a theological roots, if you want to expand on that a little bit. Yeah, I think part of what this medium does is it allows us to interact at some levels, but we lose touch with the importance of embodiment and the fact that God became a human being to walk among us, to demonstrate to us. I have a hard time believing that God would have come via Zoom if he came in this day and age. Right. I think that there is something deeply rooted in what it is to be a human being, what it is to be alive, to be socially engaged in interacting. So I think there's all kinds of things that flow out of the Incarnation and Christology and the implications for our humanness ecclesiology. What does it mean to be the church in a time when we are obviously we're embodied in our own context right now. Right. It's not like we're disembodied, but this doesn't allow us to actually fully participate in the sense of presence. Right. So if you think about sporting events, I can watch my favorite team, the Calgary Flames, play and not quite make the playoffs this year. It's a little different when you show up in a present with thousands of other people there. Right. There's a lot thank you. A number of people are just saying, okay, so I want those recommendations. But Amy here is she's starting to teach an intensive on ethics and pastoral ministry next week on Zoom. What are some follow up tasks that I could get students to perform to encourage the development of pastoral character virtue, skill, post the online setting? Yeah, absolutely. And it is so hard right in this time. But I would say a number of things. There's a whole section of my thesis that I talk about this aspect of differentiation and learning how to be self differentiated and learning how to be a healthy person in community with others. So being a person as an individual, but also being a healthy person in relationship to others, I would say it's critical that we have healthy people interacting as we think about pastoral formation. It's critical that those that are learning pastoral practice, they're not just learning the practices, they're not just learning to think theologically, but they're actually learning how to live out or learn those kind of love, joy, peace, patience, those fruit of the spirit. So to find people that are doing it and come alongside and live it, that's critical. I would also say it's challenging because theological field education, I didn't even get into any of this, but we're not doing a great job. It varies from school to school, but we don't know much about the character. Often of the supervisor. We don't know how that person is learning how to supervise. And we have students that are actually in churches, pastoring that are being mentored from afar, but they are holding the primary responsibility, never having been necessarily mentored into that role. And so there's all kinds of questions that need to be addressed in my mind. And the first is we have to find people that are willing to come alongside and manifest these fruit for people that are learning along the way. Thank you, Jason. The Mark Chapman, of course, suggest that given that online education is here to stay for good and bad reasons, which I guess there's a question to be raised there of how Bonhoffer actually took education away from the institutions. And so there is a case to be made for an alternative model. But any suggestions on how to encourage students to engage in embodiment locally as part of their education? I think that's some of what you were getting at for Amy there. And then he's raising the point as you write syllabi into course requirements, et cetera. And Mark is, of course, the DMin. program supervisor at Tyndale. I don't know, have you got to that level of sort of in your recommendations around how we're compensating for these deficiencies that you've identified? Yeah, not well. So, for example, the Association of Theological Schools and I recognize that they don't necessarily hold power. Right. It's a collection. It's gathering all these schools. Right. And have representatives there. But the ATS has come out and said, formation is important, but we can't define it. It has to be defined individually for each school. And so that would be one of the things I would say, is each school needs to make sure that they do a good job of defining formation, especially character formation, and how that's going to fit into not only their student programs, but also faculty. Right? Like, how are we looking at what does it mean to be formed? So, for example, we do student assessments regularly with tests and with assignments and those sorts of things, and we grade them. Faculty get this kind of, like, after the course, we do assessments on their teaching based on what students are giving feedback. But what do we do about character formation? Right? Do we have the same sort of tools of assessment to do that? And I would say no. And it's not even being defined for schools by the ATS. Right. So there's all kinds of things that definitely need to there's cans of worms that are starting to get or in my mind, that are starting to get opened or that need to be opened that will help. Right. Just your last point there, in a sense. To what extent are we aware of how these online methodology are we going to have to wait another ten or 15 years to find out, actually, what the product of these methods that, as you. Said that's what everybody's doing now are 60 or 70%. Is there a way to track in real time, or do we really have to wait for research for ten or 15 years on the outcomes? Well, and what do you mean, the outcomes? There's plenty of evidence saying there's distractions. There's all kinds of things that are not helpful in terms of this medium. Is that what you mean? Yeah, but apparently that evidence is not yet impacting all the institutions that are literally turning all their programs into online. Right. So there's a political dimension here that exists. Right. That's very real. There is money, there's all kinds of factors that are working against the aspect of formation. Right. In the aspect of character formation. So absolutely right. But how do you, as you said right. Bonhoffer decided to go to take it offline offline whatever that meant for him. But there you go. That's good. Yeah. Adam is asking, did your work examine the youngest of generations in terms of their formation, health and engagement when they have been or are wired for online life from the get go? Yeah, and there's tons of research no, I didn't get into that. Other than just to acknowledge that with every passing generation or each age group that comes through, we can no longer make assumptions as educators that people are going to be able to switch off those distractions. Like, oh, mature students are going to be able to know how to handle this. Those assumptions have to go out the window because the younger generation is not doing that. Yeah. I've just recently had a graduate of an institution in this environment. That basically my conversation, my mentoring conversations amount to about 15 to 20 minutes because we we can't get through 20 minutes without multiple engagements of a device. And so my mentoring internship role has to be literally broken into 20 minutes segments that's the most recent generation just graduated. Good. We're going to have to stop here. Yaman is Jason. Just wondering if you did any interviews with focus groups of seminarians to find out if they're experiencing these effects on their learning information. Yes, great question. And no, I didn't do any of that great qualitative research for sure, but there was a wide open field there. Right, okay, good. So the next session here starts in 15 minutes, and so kind of what anybody that needs to go can go. And if you would like to stay on and there's a couple more things that have popped up here. So if this is real sort of nerd focused stuff for some of us, then you're welcome to stay on here. So, yeah, thank you. Anybody else? I was just going to go back to Mark Heather next. Another thing echoing Dan's experience, my DMin. students have expressed a sense of loss from the program moving online. So much of what happens in a DMin. program is between the classes, meals, worship. We've worked hard to provide online opportunities for connecting and worship, but the lack of physical presence can't be fully compensated for. Yeah. Thanks, Mark. Anybody else that's left on here? There's 18 of us. If you just want to unmute yourself and ask a question or make a comment, feel free. We will close this at 315 so that we can move on to the next group that anybody else want to? Well, I guess what I'm struggling with is my sense of the fruit of the spirit is something that's manifested. Fruit isn't taught. It's grown literally. That's the analogy. And so I don't understand how and I actually come from a communication background. We read McCullough Innis back in the 90s when it wasn't so old. It seems like you can learn how to deal with this. I feel completely natural. I know you can't see me right now, but I just don't know why that should be impacted, because it's, like getting back to that. Spiritual things are spiritually discerned. Maybe I don't understand what's involved in educating pastors in the first place. So it seems to me that that sort of stuff should transcend the delivery method. Maybe not the technique or the things that you say, but the medium itself shouldn't overly ring that. Does that make sense? I'm not the one that did the research, though. Yeah, no, I think the challenge is that what is love apart from an embodied person? Right? Like, what does it even mean to manifest love in the absence of another? Right? I don't even know that you can do that. Right. And I'm thinking about learning these things. How do you learn in the absence of an embodied person? Because there's more than just ways to do it. It's actually a presence. It's a way of being. How do you learn that way of being when we just have these little screens? Right. Well, I feel connected to you now. I don't want to dismiss everything you've said, but I think that you can deal with it and with the lack of an alternative presently, I'm pretty thankful. And maybe this is kind of provincial of me to say, like, we're literally learning the stuff on Zoom right now, and I know the irony hasn't escaped anybody, but it just seems to me that this is good enough for now. I wouldn't want to do it forever anyway. Just sharing my thoughts. I did appreciate your appreciation or your presentation. Thank you, Dennis. Yeah, it is interesting. Sorry, Carlos, did you want to go ahead. Thank you. Sorry that I interrupt you, because I would appreciate the presentation Jason gave us as a pastor and trying or striving every time to gather my people and teach them the word. I feel that even though we had the opportunity to see each other through the camera, that interaction, that capacity to be able to share the things, even with how you call it, not only through words, but also the expressions of our body and all that, that will express really the teaching and the belief that we also have. So the effect on people will be better than just online. What I have is people enjoy it at the beginning. Before, when I have the Bible study of the church, they were enjoying it when we started online, they were happy at the beginning because we still have the opportunity to be able to see each other. But as we went along, I can see the diminish of the desire to be there because it's not the same. And I think in that sense, when we're talking about the virtual share that educated on the virtual part of the people is not there anymore. Right. And I agree with adjacent in that sense. Thank you. Yes. That's good. Mark is thrown in here. When I mentor someone in person, I go to them physically and they can't avoid me. When I mentor someone electronically, they can just ignore me and there is nothing I can do about it. And that goes to the distraction issue as well. Right. Teacher teachers have gotten used to the idea that the blank screen or the black screen with the name on it means your student might be there 25% of the time. Really. Scary stuff. Right. Okay. Thanks Dennis, for your comment there. Yeah. Good. Well, I think we're going to cut it there and we better be able to see these recommendations here. For sure. How do you want to see those? Well, I don't know. Maybe James is going to have some format for shared whatever you've got there. But all the best in tomorrow. Sort of hit and submit and off it goes. It's all there is at this point, and then I just wait for a defense. Thank you. Great. Thanks everyone. For everyone. Thank you. God bless. For sure. Take care. Bye. ***** This is the end of the e-text. This e-text was brought to you by Tyndale University, J. William Horsey Library - Tyndale Digital Collections *****