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
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
Mccluen, 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
D minn 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.
Demon 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 demon program supervisor at Tindale.
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 Demon
students have expressed a sense of loss from the program moving online.
So much of what happens in a Demon 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.